Peachy-Keen

After waiting all week for the big day to arrive, I purchased my bushel of peaches from the Tree-Ripe Citrus Company truck on Friday, July 2nd.  The peaches are sold by the half-bushel, and that's what I had planned to get (one only) but everyone in line was talking about how great they are so I impulsively bought a full bushel instead.  Opening the box up at home; I found that they were rock-hard and I was a little worried about that! However, by Sat. some were already ripening and tasted GREAT and were very juicy!

By Sunday they were all ripe and I canned one pressure canner load (7 jars...would have all been quarts but I miscalculated when peeling/cooking and ended up with 6 qts and 1 pint).  On Monday  I canned a second load, this time using the pressure canner as a water-bath canner.  This time I filled all 7 quart jars but for some reason 2 did not seal!  Sunday's batch took a long 5 hours but Monday's went faster;  I think it was 3.5 hours so it does go faster with more practice (I also had Brian's help blanching the peaches for about 20 minutes; the remainder of the time he was on kid-duty). 

The peach-canning recipes allow the cook to choose what liquid to pack them in...water, apple or grape juice, or any number of sugar syrup recipes ranging from very light to heavy syrup.   I opted to pack the peaches in apple juice, and cooking the peaches in that juice resulted a large quantity of a very delicious apple-peach juice being left over.  It's great for drinking straight, but also looked to be ideal for jelly-making (more on that later).  On Sunday (the 4th), I dutifully used 11 cups of apple juice as the recipe called for, but after cooking the peaches in the juice and then packing the jars, I had a whopping 12+ cups of this yummy apple-peach juice left in my stock pot (like magic, huh?)!  Therefore, I reduced the amount of juice used in Monday's batch down to five cups of apple juice to start out with, and that worked just fine.

My notes:

purchased 1 bushel, $66 (sold by the half-bushel for $33 each)
1/2 bushel = approx 25 lbs
17.5 lbs fresh peaches = 1 pressure canner load
individual peaches averaged 6 oz each, therefore approx 46 fruits made a full pressure canner load of 7 pints

Final yield of canned goods:
13 quarts
1 pint
lots of peaches for eating fresh

Cost:  
$33/half-bushel
$1.32/lb

Side note about the canning process:
Keeping the canning lids warm...I dislike having so many things going on the stove in a tight space, so I've been using the crock pot on the "high" settting to keep my lids warm while filling my jars.  This has turned out to be very handy for me and makes it easier to start heating up the big pressure cooker (or water-bath canner) while finishing up cooking the food, thus making the whole process faster.