Picking Peaches (and apricots)

Today Gwennie, L (the little sweetie I watch), my friend Pam, and I went to pick peaches and apricots. It was a long drive, but quite fun once we got there.

First we got boxes and baskets and began searching for peaches. The area is huge, the trees groaned under the weight of semi-ripe peaches. The ground was littered with rotting peaches. Rotting peaches feel disgusting when you step on them, the squish made me shudder a little.

Pam found a huge and perfect peach. Notice her box is quite empty, this was early on in the picking. We both filled a box and could have filled many more.

Gwennie and L were able to reach some of the peaches. They happily used the child sized baskets that were available.

The apricots were hard to get to, the best ones were high up. The ground around the trees was wet and the orchard was filled with mosquitoes. I let one of the mosquitoes binge on my knee for a moment before swatting it away, and the little girls were amazed at that. As you pulled a few apricots off more would fall to the ground. Thud thud thud, you could hear them drop. I bent over to pull something out of my shoe and was hit in the back by a falling apricot.

I really liked the way this looked. This strange viney weed grows in the rosemary in my front yard.
It looks like we are headed off, and done. However this was actually on our way to pick apricots.

I ended up with about 25 pounds of peaches and only a few pounds of apricots. I decided to make a peach pie, which involved a lot of peach parboiling. By then I was exhausted and lazy so I bought a store-made pie crust. I love making pie crust, usually. I really want to dry the apricots, but the girls and Will have been eating them. I love dehydrated apricots.