Peaches and Plums

My friend Beth and I decided to can peaches and plums together this year.  Beth has a  shiro plum tree in her back yard that was producing a whole lot of beautiful yellow plums.  For our peaches, we went to a farm that was selling Dixie Gems for 80 cents a pound, which is at least 20 percent lower than other farms in our area.  (The other farms were selling for $1 to $1.50 per pound for u-pick.)  We each picked about 66 pounds, and it only took us about 45 minutes to an hour to get the job done.  

The cashier only charged us for 62 pounds each, so the total cost was only $49.60.  Since we each canned 24 quarts and still each had 2 one-gallon freezer bags left over, the cost per quart was around $1.85.  Here are are some photos of the process:

First we washed and blanched the peaches for about a minute in boiling water, and then plunged them into an ice bath to stop them from cooking.  This allowed the skins to practically (and sometimes literally) fall right off.  

(This is a picture of Beth peeling and myself doing the blanching and ice bath.  We were at Beth's house for this event, where she had a great idea to cover her kitchen island with a blanket to catch spills.  She was then able to throw the blanket right into the washing machine.  Also, aprons are a must when canning, pickling, and jamming- they are so easy to clean and use as make-shift towels and hot pads.)

We then sliced them and soaked the slices in a mixture of lemon juice and water to keep them from turning brown during the canning.  The ratio was about 1/8 cup lemon juice to 4 cups of water. 

From the lemon juice, we filled our clean jars as full as we could with sliced peaches, and poured a light syrup over them.  The syrup was 2 cups of sugar and 6 cups of water, which we brought to a rolling boil.  After we got the liquid to 1/2 inch from the top and got the air bubbles out, we wiped the rims and covered them with our new, boiled lids and rings and put the jars into the water bath for 30 minutes.

We ended up using a BBQ for the water bath.  The canning pot was too big for the kitchen stove with everything else we had going, and it was not boiling very quickly.  Sometimes, you have to make it work with what you have, and I am thankful that Beth’s husband suggested we use their BBQ.  It worked very well.  

It took us about 9 hours to get all 48 quarts processed and to get the remaining peaches peeled and ready for jam and for freezing.  We didn’t get to the plums until the next day.

For the plums, we were able to peel them very easily as we picked them right off the tree, so we did not need to blanch them.  We also skipped the lemon juice step and just filled our pint jars with as many sliced plums as we could fit.  We used the same syrup recipe as we did with the peaches, and we put them into a water bath for 20 minutes.  We each canned a dozen pints of plums, which didn’t cost us any money...just a few hours of our time.  Beth and I were each able to make several pints of jam from our leftover peaches and plums as well. 

I am so thankful for friends who offer to share their homegrown produce with my husband and me.  We don’t have a lot of room to grow, but we so enjoy food from a garden.  If you know someone who has an abundance of food in their garden or orchard, maybe offer to trade goods or services for some.  If they invite you to come pick, you could even clean up the rotten fruit on their ground as a way of thanking them for their generosity.  Or if you have an abundance of produce, you can offer it to your friends that you know would enjoy it (like Beth and her husband did with their plums), or donate it to your local food panty.  Don’t let your hard earned food go to waste.  Some local non-profit gleaning organizations will even come out to your house and pick it for you.  There is always someone who will be grateful for it, and it is nice to know your helping a good cause. 

How are you doing with your canning?  Have you come across any great tricks or recipes?  Thank you for reading about this mindful home.