Peaches, Peaches! We All Fall Down!

It's September, & in September truckloads of peaches come into town from Utah. In keeping up this long standing tradition we all put our orders in, one box or two. Some families order four or five! You know when the day of delivery is here, just drive through town & you will see boxes of peaches on every front porch, where they stay as we check them daily waiting for them to ripen enough to "put up". (That's canning slang for "preserve"). We are all getting ready to bottle, freeze, cobbler, jam & jelly 'em up! The conversation among the women all over town is consumed by this subject. We are all in a frenzy, on a race against over ripe fruit & the onslaught of the ever annoying fruit fly! When I married my dear husband & he moved me to this little town, I was eager to be a good Joe City woman & was willing to learn everything that this entailed. On my way to reaching this goal I had to reach out to the older, wiser & more experienced generation of Joe City women. On the top of my list was of course my mother-in-law, Eleanor Hansen. She has a wealth of knowledge & I have been learning from her for 17 years now. After receiving my first order of peaches she taught me how to can them & how to make jam with them. She taught me how to appreciate a beautifully bottled can of peaches. You can't just shove them in the jar, you have to place them in so that they look nice. Since then, I always stand back to admire my bottled peaches when there all done & sitting on the shelf. I am grateful for this lesson in taking care to make all my hard work look good. I love being a part of this tradition. I finshed all my peaches today & am proud to say that out of two boxes I only had to throw away 2 rotten peaches! My back hurts from standing all day & my hands & nails are fruit stained but it will be very rewarding to go down in the cellar in the middle of winter & grab a jar of fresh peaches that I preserved myself & I can pronounce all the ingredients, peaches, water, sugar.