What’s Up, Peaches?
For some reason, I’ve just never identified with the phrase “bucket list,” but there’s no denying that there are certain life goals I can’t wait to accomplish and try to prioritize on my travels. Last weekend, I got to cross another one off my list!
I have lived in Florida my whole life and North Florida for the last nine years, but somehow I still had never gone peach-picking. I’ve gone to strawberry U-Picks at local farms and had a blast, but I never made the journey over the Georgia border and picked my favorite fruit! This year, I decided to do some research and managed to find two nearby farms that were still open, but neither were allowing people to pick their own fruit, and driving two hours to pick up a crate of peaches just didn’t check the boxes for the experience I was craving.
I pictured tall trees with wooden ladders, losing myself in the leaves, and passing delicious, palm-sized peaches down to my partner in the hot summer sun. I fantasized about the victorious drive home with our chins dripping with juices, fresh from our plunder.
And then, my early research paid off! 3 weeks later, Burton Brook’s Orchards in Barney, GA announced on Facebook that their U-Pick would be open starting that Friday! My boyfriend and I quickly made plans to drive up and immediately started looking at recipes for cobbler. We woke up early Sunday morning and called the farm to make sure they were open and to ask the important and necessary questions about how busy they expected to be and whether we would be able to socially distance while visiting.
The first part of my vision ended up being false. It turns out the trees are very short! Some were only a little taller than me, so no ladders were necessary. There was only one other family in the orchard and they left shortly after we got there, so the two of us had acres of peach trees to ourselves. There were so many peaches and the farther away we walked from the main building, the more there were, and the bigger they got. In order to determine which peaches were perfectly ripe and ready to be chosen, we obviously had to taste test a few. With the number of peaches that had ripened and gone unpicked and thus smashed to the ground, I didn’t feel very guilty about testing the merchandise. I would generally recommend washing all of your fruit before consuming it, but this was my fantasy and I wanted to savor each bite, dirt and all. The second half of my daydreams ended up being very on point; we were juicy and sticky-fingered until we doused ourselves in hand sanitizer at the car afterwards.
Since then it has been a race against time to consume all this fruit before it goes bad. That same night we made a peach cobbler and drank peach daiquiris, some have been gifted and turned into peach syrups, and yet there are still so many left. There was talk of freezing or canning some, but I don’t know if I’m ever going to want to eat a peach again after this week.
Burton Brook’s Peach Orchards announced yesterday that their U-Pick was closed for the season after only one week due to a small crop this year, so I’m extra grateful I got make my dream come true!
Especially with how small businesses have been impacted by this pandemic, I highly recommend looking up and supporting local farmers near you!
