Peach Picking Part II – or, Death by Peaches

Last week’s column described my adventure to a local orchard several years ago. What do you mean you didn’t read my column? Run back to your recycling bin, stat, and retrieve it, will you? What do you mean, you put me in the bottom of the birdcage? I hope you had the decency to put me face down, at least.

Each of my six children, even the non-ambulatory one, had a plastic grocery bag to collect peaches. Each one had filled and stretched the bag far beyond its natural capacity – you know, sort of the way middle-aged women tend to dress for weddings. We returned with 135 peaches in six bags. Notice I didn’t say “about 150 peaches” or “over 100” peaches. I gave you a specific number because we decided to count the booty (no longer referencing women’s wear here) when we came home. Then we came to our senses.

We did not count with the rising elation of an expert angler describing his catch, or a child counting out his coins. It was more with a sense of dread: like the mounting death toll after a disaster strikes. As the numbers rose, so did our dismay. We got to 135. We decided to omit the peaches we had devoured in the orchard with our picnic lunches.

Even though 135 peaches is too much for a family of eight – and mind you, the two youngest were so little that together, they barely had the peach-eating capacity of one small child - I would have been happier if we had brought home 153. Then, I could have felt all good and spiritual about it, because it would have been like the Biblical haul of fish. Remember when the resurrected Jesus used His divine Fishfinder to tell the disciples exactly where to cast their nets, and they brought up 153 large fish without breaking the nets? I might have sensed some spiritual insight if we had bagged 153 peaches. Instead, I felt like some depraved (deprived?) peach glutton.


I had no plans except to eat peaches and make my children eat them.


It was not too many a year ago,
In an orchard near to me,
That we picked too, too many peaches
That hung right off the trees;
And soon we were consumed by the peaches we’d brought
And were forced to eat them to be set free.

--- With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe and “Annabel Lee”


My culinary vocabulary did not include canning, preserving, or freezing. We were just going to have to eat our way out of this peach avalanche. I now realize I could have cut the peaches, sprinkled a little sugar on them, and put them in the freezer, but I didn’t know this then. How much more memorable for my kids was the summer we shall refer to as “Death by Peaches.”


We didn’t know many others in our subdivision, so sharing peaches would have been a fine and neighborly gesture. That, too, was too normal a thing to do. I’m ashamed to tell you that I didn’t share a single peach with a single soul. My mental facilities always work better in reverse gear. At the time, all we did was eat and count peaches.


Our glut of peaches required everyone to eat their daily quota. It was like a rationing system in reverse: you had to eat three to five peaches a day if you wanted to eat anything else. Of course, we had only picked the plumpest, ripest, and juiciest peaches, so we had little time in which to accomplish this feat. It didn’t matter how it got done, so long as they were eaten. I was setting the rules; let someone else figure out the logistics.


They could eat their afternoon’s dose of peaches prior to enjoying lunch, or they could enjoy it as their lunch: peaches on your pizza, or peaches with your pizza. For some variety, try peanut butter and peach sandwiches along with a peach smoothie.


My kids really got into the kitchen during our peach-capades. They made peach cobbler, peach pie, peach glaze, peach bread, and peach turnovers. We tried the blanching/boiling technique that was supposed to help the peels just slip right off, but all it did was turn our peaches into big gray balls. I don’t remember how we finished that batch of peaches off, because it wouldn’t look too appetizing in a peach cobbler.


Toward the end, our peaches, like little aging people, had become a little too soft and a little too wrinkly, with mysterious bruises here and there. No matter, with a knife the blemishes could be excised. Just think of it as a little botanical botox. At long last, we finished that 135th peach. If we were not so bloated with peaches, we might have been proud and celebrated.


Later that fall, the ladies’ group at church announced a trip to an apple orchard. “Ooh!” squealed my youngest daughter, who was about four years old then. “Could we go peachpicking for apples next time?”