The love of peaches

It’s been a battle with squirrels (red, black, gray) and birds, yet I managed to harvest a respectable number of peaches yesterday.

An amateur arborist, I never know what my dwarf peach tree will yield come August. Some springs she doesn’t bloom well. A sure sign summer’s crop is doomed.

This spring the peach tree bloomed profusely. Therefore, I pruned branches and watched for fruit forming from blossoms.

Throughout the summer, abundant, pinkish, juicy, fuzzy peaches developed. My favorite of all fruits since childhood.

My late Uncle Herm, a seasoned gardener, tended the fruit trees in the McCoy Bottom where the maternal side of my family lived. I recall peaches and green apples in the orchard just beyond the barn.

Both fruit made delicious pies, preserves, and jelly. The McCoy mothers set up a huge copper pot outside the homeplace and stirred yummy apple butter.

My sisters, cousins, and I squealed when the hot bubbles popped from the kettle and landed on our bare middles and arms. A sort of rite of passage.

Presently, my peach harvest ripens with stem side down on the Tri-City Times newspaper, covered with pillow cases, (per a website recommendation).

I’ve culled the damaged and rotting fruit for its salvageable pieces. Now, the remaining harvest rests until morning when I’ll lift the pillowcases for the touch-test.

It they’re fully ripe, I’ll peel and slice enough peaches to bake my first peach cobbler in ages. A cobbler has no bottom crust, and more of a biscuit topping than the rolled crust of a pie.

The traditional southern cobbler is served with cold milk. However, I prefer my Yule Love It Lavender Lemon ice cream with the dessert.

My Hermann friends who invited me to join their tour to Germany and Austria last May have never consumed a peach cobbler. So, I aim to change that misfortune when I join them for Sunday dinner tomorrow.

And I must say I’ve thought of my late husband several times in harvesting my homegrown peaches. Although Mel loved peach pie a la mode, he wasn’t fond of mowing around our little orchard of peach, pear, and apple trees.

And of all surprises, the pear and apple tree also bear fruit. No, not enough apples for the labor of apple butter. Yet, as did the peach tree, the apple tree may surprise me with a good yield for a few apple pies.

Or apple crisp. My mother baked the best.

Now, pear is my least favorite fruit. Yet, I inherited my mother’s cookbooks and have a feeling I’ll find a recipe if the need arises.

Dear Reader, in this season of Michigan’s bountiful harvests, I consider such families as my neighbors the Fogler brothers who remind me of my McCoy uncles.

Men devoted to tilling the land, planting seeds, and harvesting the fruit of the labor.

Oh, and then there’s one woman who watches and waits for her peaches to ripen so she may bake a cobbler for friends.

Contact Iris at irisfarmletters@gmail.com