Peaches & Canning

I went out to Homestead Farm in Poolesville, MD yesterday with Seth and Housemate Cortney for some peach-picking. The picking was good, and we may have gotten a little carried away considering that, between us, we came home with over 40 pounds of peaches (and a few pounds of blackberries too!). Pick-your-own peaches were priced at $1.49/lb, so the total damage came to about $60 total. They're usually priced at $3.50/lb or so at our local farmer's market, so it's actually quite a deal.

Luckily, they had canning jars for sale at the farm, $11 for 12 packs of either the pint jars or smaller jelly jars, so I got to try my hand at canning for the first time. As soon as we got home, I got to work slicing peaches and sterilizing my jars per instructions from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. I jarred up 6 pints of sliced peaches in a light syrup, and then got to work making some jam. I didn't have any pectin on hand, so I just mixed about 4 or 5 cups of crushed peaches with about an equal amount of sugar and boiled this mix for just shy of an hour while it reduced down to the right consistency. This made about 5 1/2 jars of jam. Again, I jarred these using the instructions provided from National Center for Home Food Preservation.



There are still tons left though, so I'll be back at work this evening, mixing up some peach butter in the crock pot and cutting up peaches for freezing. They're already soft from the trip home, so I've got to act fast!

Peaches will be in season through the end of August in the DC area, so be sure to get out and pick your own!