How Many Peaches Does a Family Actually Need to Put Up?

Peaches give you about a week and a half between not yet and too late, and a box of them doesn't care what else is on your calendar. Tomatoes are looser about it, but only until the first frost, which in Salt Lake City tends to land somewhere between the middle and the twenty-second of October.

Lily wrote the labels last year on eleven half-pint jars of peach freezer jam, Sharpie on masking tape. Every one of them says PEECH with a date under it. In January she took one out for toast, read the lid out loud and said somebody had spelled it wrong. Then she looked at the handwriting a second time and decided it was spelled the way she'd meant it.

How much fruit do you need to put up?

Less than the produce stands will try to sell you, and more than you'd guess if you've never watched a freezer empty out in March. Take a half bushel of O'Henry freestones, which the farmers' market stands sell at a little under 24 pounds. Three batches of freezer jam use about three pounds of them and make fifteen half-pint jars. Nine quart bags of sliced peaches take roughly two pounds of whole fruit each, so 18 pounds. That leaves around three pounds for pits, bruised spots and whatever gets eaten over the sink, which is a fair share for the people doing the work.

A pound of whole peaches turns into about two cups of slices once the skins and pits are gone. Scale that up or down by the pound. What I'd tell a new person is to pick the number of quart bags first, because a bag is what you'll reach for in January, and let the jam take whatever the bags don't.

For the slices, blanch the peaches in boiling water for about 45 seconds, move them to a sink of ice water and the skins slide off with your thumb. Slice into a bowl with a few tablespoons of lemon juice stirred through so they don't brown, spread them on sheet pans, freeze flat for two hours, then bag them. If you skip the sheet pan you get one peach-shaped brick per bag.

For the jam, read the box your pectin came in, because the brands don't agree. A typical box wants two cups of crushed fruit to four cups of sugar and three-quarters of a cup of water, and that makes about five half-pints a batch. You stir for three minutes, ladle into jars, leave them on the counter for the time on the box and then into the freezer. It sets over a day, so a runny first look is fine. Old recipe cards are bad at quantities, as Lily found when she found Grandma's card and wouldn't stop asking, so write yours down with numbers.

What do you do with tomatoes before the frost?

Pick anything showing a streak of pink, orange or yellow and let it finish on a counter at room temperature. A tomato that has started to turn will ripen indoors in about a week. A small hard green one will not, no matter how long you wait, and it takes energy from the fruit that can still make it, so pull those off the plant now and compost them.

Romas are the ones to freeze whole. Cut out the core, set them on a tray, freeze them and drop them in a bag once they're hard. When you run one under the hot tap the skin cracks and slips off in one piece, which beats a pot of boiling water in a kitchen that's already 85 degrees. Thawed, they go into chili or sauce. Five pounds of Romas cooks down to about a quart of thick sauce, so a couple of tubs of whole tomatoes turn into a good deal less sauce than you'd think.

Tomato jam is a different animal from peach, though people mix up the word. It's cooked for 40 minutes to an hour with sugar and vinegar and a little red pepper, and then it goes in the freezer. No pectin and no 24-hour wait.

A spoonful on a cracker is the whole sales pitch.

What can children actually do?

Whatever fits their size, for about forty minutes. After that the work is yours.

A two-year-old can rub the fuzz off peaches in a dishpan of cool water set on the floor and will eat one in the process. An eight-year-old can measure the sugar, level it with a butter knife, stir and write the labels, spelling aside. An eleven-year-old can run the timer on the blanching pot, move peaches to the ice water with a slotted spoon once an adult has lifted them out, and slice with a real knife if somebody is standing there. Nobody under about twelve touches the pot of boiling water. The fuzz makes some arms itch and some children quit over that. Let them.

A child who eats four things is a separate problem, and I've written about where I stand on cooking to order in Ben eats four things and I still won't cook a second dinner. But a child who helps cut a peach will often eat that peach, which makes the job a free test of what they'll accept.

What does a shelf teach a family?

Mostly arithmetic, and after that something about appetite. Section 89 of the Doctrine and Covenants has a line about food, and it's the last clause I keep stopping on.

Every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof; all these to be used with prudence and thanksgiving.
D&C 89:11

The verse asks for prudence along with thanksgiving, and a shelf is where prudence turns into numbers. Nine bags of peaches over five months comes to about two bags a month, so when somebody opens the freezer in December and finds the count was wrong, nobody has to explain it to a child, who can see the empty rack for herself. A shelf also records what a family eats. People put up what they wish they ate, and by May the jars nobody reached for are still standing there in the same neat handwriting. A child who keeps pulling the tomato jam and never touches the plain frozen peaches has just done a market survey, and next September's quantities change because of it.

The Proverbs send the sluggard to the ant, whose credential is that she "gathereth her food in the harvest" (Proverbs 6:8). Peaches don't wait out a bad week, so there is real sense in that. But a freezer full of labeled bags says nothing about anyone's character. It's food, and a family without it would have been fine too.

Frequently Asked Questions

When should I pick tomatoes if a frost is coming?

Start watching the forecast in the first week of October, since the usual frost lands somewhere from mid-October to the twenty-second. Take everything with any color, bring it in and keep it at room temperature. If the forecast says 32 sooner than that, pick everything that's full size and quit feeling guilty about the small hard ones.

Is freezer jam as good as canned jam?

For flavor it's better because the fruit is never cooked, and the texture is softer. It keeps about a year in the freezer, then around three weeks in the refrigerator once it's thawed. You can give a jar away, too, as long as it travels frozen or in a cooler bag and the neighbor knows to keep it in the freezer. Skip the canner for this one.

How do I know a peach is ready?

Look at the color under the red blush. If the background is cream or gold and not green, and the fruit gives a little when you press near the stem, it's ready. Smell it too. A ripe peach smells like a peach, and a hard one smells like nothing. They bruise easily, so use them the day you pick or buy.

Is it faster to do it without the kids?

Yes, by a lot. Do the first batch of jam with them, let them leave when they want and finish the rest on your own.

What I still don't like about putting up peaches is mostly the sugar. Twelve cups goes into three batches of jam, the lower-sugar pectins set looser and no amount of fresh fruit makes a box recipe into health food. I also don't buy the idea that a shelf teaches children thrift and gratitude on its own. It does for the child who gets to eat the jam and watch the count go down. Another child will only notice that a Saturday was taken, and a full freezer won't change that for them.

with love, Melissa