Peaches

Right. Canning Peaches.

First, you have to gather up your crew. 

Clean up crew....check.

This guy stayed right there with me while I peeled 3 or 4 peaches, then he left...quitter. 

Well, I still had the boy with me and sometimes I had hubbs helping cut. This was a three day adventure! But we got them done! 

The reason it took so long is well, life happened, and because to prevent the things from getting too brown you can only cut enough for one canner load.  Load the peaches in their jars and get them to canning. Then you rinse and repeat till they are all canned. This would be a lot quicker if you had someone still cutting while you were tending to the actual canning business. But its a slow process when your the only one cutting. 

That's only 7 quart jars you can cut at a time. We estimated around 8 peaches for each quart. And I shut down production at dark every night because I didnt want to be doing this all night. 

I'm told, that if you drop them in boiling water for 30ish seconds, the skin will easily peel off. So I decided to try that this year on the first batch, but it didn't "work like a charm" so I quit doing that. It was more of a PITA than it helped. Some peach skins peel right off anyway, some don't. I didn't get any different results by boiling them first. 

In order to keep them from getting super brown while your cutting, you mix up a bowl of water and a bit of vinegar or lemon juice to put the cut peaches in. But you want to make sure you rinse the peaches well before you put them in the jars to be canned or you will have a vinegar/lemon juice taste to them. 

So now that we had a bunch cut, we took them in the house and started to rinse them. 

Before you rinse your peaches tho, you will want to make up your syrup and get that to boiling .

We use light syrup in our peaches, which is a mixture of 1 cup sugar to 2 cups water.(stir the syrup) 

For a full canner load, I just go on and put  4 cups of sugar and 8 cups of water in and that does all 7 quarts. (if the syrup is boiling. turn the heat down) Your mileage may vary. 

There are recipes out there that you can use no sugar or a sugar substitute for those of you that don't want any extra sugar. (stir the syrup)The light syrup works well for us. (stir the syrup)we want to taste the peach, not the sugar.

Then make sure you have your water bath canner heating up. (stir the syrup)

Then you rinse your peeled peaches and begin to put them in a jar.(stir the syrup) This is a skill within itself, because you have to put them in there like puzzle pieces or you won't get very many in there. (stir the syrup)

Once you get all your jars filled with peaches, you stir the syrup.

This is what it looks like when you are ready to put the stirred syrup in the jars.

You have your canner heating up, your syrup staying stirred and heated and your peaches all nice and snuggly in their jars, your funnel, ladle, some paper towels, flats and rings.

Then you commence to putting the syrup in, and taking the air bubbles out from between the peaches. I stress this because these things have a great big hole in the middle of them and, well, you take it from here. They also seal themselves against the side of the jar and create air bubbles under them......

may I present Exhibit A. 

Do you see that great big air bubble in the center of this jar? Get it out of there!! That's what that butter knife is doing there. I stick it down in the jar and move things around with it until Im satisfied I have gotten all the air out Im gonna get. 

Then I make sure the water is up to the the head space and wipe the top of the jar down good where the flats will sit. On goes the flats and rings, and into the canner they go for 30 mins for quarts.

On the other side of 30mins, you should have something like this. 

Once these things cool off (I would give them at least a good 12 hours), you should take the rings off and wash the crap out of the jars. They will be sticky as all get out and who wants to grab something that looks sooo good and ....umm....sticky?

There's 39 quarts of peaches added to my mini grocery store called "The Cellar" 

Ive been hexipuffing! I was able to do a couple at night before bed. My count is at 4 now....lol 

TTFN