It started last Friday when the kid's decided they wanted to "pick their own food"...so I took that literally. We headed down to Vanzant Fruit Farms and let them go crazy! This may have been a form of child slavery...but they were excited and we had a lot of fun! :)
This is the first year in 33 years that Vanzant Fruit Farms in Springdale, AR has opened their orchards to the public for picking. At $.90 a pound and all the peaches delicious you NEED to go get some! Everyone we met there was super nice, and there were a lot of other families there.
Benny and Lexi had the most fun I think with the "fruit farming" (am I being to liberal with the definition of the 20 or so minutes we spent picking peaches...probably so..but lets just go with it) and Max was not so impressed...after he started sweating he was done.
They had fun picking....
and picking....
and Spiderman picking...
and picking...until..
The lovely Vanzant's worker showed up on her ATV and helped us carry our mother load of peaches back to where we parked. We picked just over 26 lbs of peaches and paid just $20.66. Awesome.
Once we got home we had a play date, then dinner plans...then..life really.
It wasn't until the next day (Saturday night to be exact) the I built up the courage to "process" our haul.
I learned something very important from this right away....when you pick peaches...and have tiny little hands helping...getting the very low fruit...do NOT wait a day to process them. They get mushy fast!
The first thing we did with the peaches I had actually not anticipated doing when we set out for the orchard the day before. But the lovely Vanzant's lady (I really wish I would have gotten her name!) suggested we try freezing them as well! I had to do this because as soon as she got done explaining it Benny looked up with his big doe eyes and said, "We.could.make.SMOOTHIES with those!" He was so excited it was a done deal peaches were being frozen!
To do this is actually really simple...sounding.
Step 1) Peal the peaches- The lady said we should be able to just peel the skin back. False. We had to use a vegetable peeler, then a paring knife on the softer spots.
Step 2) Cut peaches in half and remove the seed. (Easy peesy)
Step 3) Place peaches in a bowl and add just enough lime juice to coat the outsides. This stops them from browning and looking yucky!
Step 4) Place them on a cookie sheet, then place the cookie sheet in the freezer. This "flash freezes" the peaches so they can be stored and stacked without squishing!Genius.
Step 5) Place the flash frozen peach halves into Ziploc bags. (We used quart sized ones.)
Done. Easy right?!
For the rest of the peaches we canned them! I found this "recipe" on Pinterest and used it. This girl, she's a genius. Here is the link -> http://shinycooking.com/millions-of-peaches-peaches-for-me
I am a VERY inexperienced canner and her instructions were simple enough that even I could follow!
My bushel and a half of peaches yielded 6 Ziploc bags of frozen peach halves, 6 quarts and 1 pint of canned peaches...then I ran out of clean jars...but! It worked out in my favor! I was able to use the left over peaches to make one of my husband's favorite things...peach cobbler! I used this recipe -> http://www.make-it-do.com/cook-it-bake-it/peach-cobbler/ (also found via Pinterest). I followed the recipe exactly except for the peaches I used had already been blanched from the canning process. They were still SUPER juicy and sweet so I did not add any sugar or water to my fruit mixture! So good. And it earned me "Good Wife Points".
It was a fun project and I think we are going to do it again. We love peaches...almost as much as I love taking pictures of the kids picking peaches.... ♥
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