I've always felt it was too much effort to keep track of yields if a crop isn't harvested all at once, so I don't know for sure how much fruit our kitchen peach produced this year.  My best guess is about four bushels, which is just about average for a mature peach and which feels like a lot.

Since I ran out of freezer room (having saved some space back for more green beans and soup), I did a lot of experimenting with alternative preservation techniques (compared to our tried-and-true peach leather).  I canned a load of peach chunks (which look good) and a load of peach sauce (in which I didn't leave enough head room, resulting in an eruption that ruined the seal on five jars during cooling).  And then there were the jams.

As I've written previously, it took some experimentation to figure out how to make cooked jams with no store-bought pectin, and I'm still working the kinks out of the process.  This week's experiment involved lowering the sugar levels, and also mixing in smaller amounts of other fruits.  I learned that pure white peaches will make a slightly-runny jam with two cups of sugar per batch (two cups of peach puree and two cups of apple-pectin juice), but I wouldn't want to go any lower with the sugar content if I expected my jam to set.

Maggie gave me two cups of pulpy grape juice that she had laboriously harvested from her Concords, and I turned those into a batch of jam as well.  Adding two cups of apple-pectin juice and two cups of sugar resulted in a fast, thick jam, making me think that I could have cut back the sugar content.  Or, better yet, mixed some of the grape juice with peach pulp for a tangy, well-set jam containing less sugar.

Since I was making a batch of peach jam at the same time as the grape and didn't have quite three cups of the finished grape jam, I added a layer of peach on top of each jar for a very unique jam presentation.  This jam layering didn't work as well with less-dense jams, though, so be forewarned.

In the midst of all this peach-and-jam frenzy, I let the red raspberries and blueberries start to get away from me.  So, Saturday, I mixed peaches and berries to make a beautiful, slightly-tarter jam (even though the sugar content was my now-standard two cups of sugar per four-fruit-cup batch).  The red-raspberry/peach and blueberry/peach jams are still setting up, so I don't know how well they gelled, but they sure did taste delicious when I licked out the pans, and the colors are stunning.

Although all of this experimentation has been fun, I'm definitely glad the last few peaches are in the fridge for fresh eating, with none left on the tree.  I can't imagine having more than one tree producing at the same time, so take heed while planning your orchard!

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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