Work We Must, But the Peach is Free

Last night, as I was going to bed, visions of peaches filled my head. Each time I closed my eyes I saw myself blanching peaches, pitting peaches, and slicing peaches. It made sense since I had spent a good chunk of the day picking and canning peaches.

As I worked in the garden this week, I learned a couple things about gardening that probably apply to real life. I'll let you figure out the metaphors.

1. There is always something to do in the garden, and you should do it as early as you can.

Although I've been kind of helpful in the garden since coming here, it wasn't until this week that I had an active role in maintaining it. My parents were gone for several days, so I took over harvesting the vegetables and picking the fallen peaches. I realized it was best to just plan on spending at least an hour out there every day, even if that hour was interrupted by short naps ending and bees getting in the way. When the rain and hail came one day and the smoke settled in the next, I was glad that I hadn't procrastinated.

2. You will not keep most of what you produce. My mom said that she had to prune and then thin 90% of the peaches in April so that the peaches would actually grow. Then several of the peaches fell on the ground and became unusable almost instantly. Those that were still usable stopped being usable within a day, or faster if we put them in plastic bags instead of buckets. Then, of the peaches that still looked okay, some had bruises that we had to cut away. And so on.

And even so, there were so many peaches! 

3. When you have abundance, you will not mind throwing a lot away.

When you buy a peach from the store, you typically spend a lot of money on it, so you really, really want to enjoy it. If it turns out you didn't choose a good one or opened it before it was ripe, you still feel like you have to use it. Because you bought it!

On the other hand, if you have trees producing so many peaches that you're dreaming about them, you feel no attachment to any particular peach. You can throw away any peaches that aren't the right ripeness and focus on the ones that will make you most happy.

It would not have made me happy to try to pick this peach here.

4. Conversely, you can find a use for what is not ideal. The peaches that had been sitting for a day or more bruised easily, and we didn't want to use any bruised parts for canning. So we stuck them in the blender and made fruit leather (which we always call fruit bacon now, courtesy of John). 

This . . . is not appetizing

This looks better. And tastes better.

5. The law of the harvest: if you didn't like peaches as a child, then don't be surprised when none of your kids like them either.

Even Jack! We got a few bites of peach into him, but he was mostly interested in squishing them, not eating them.

Fleeing the scene of the crime

6. Many hands make light work, but there's always a bottleneck.

In this case, the bottleneck was not the bottle. It was the slicing. It was faster to have my sister and me there helping my mom than for her to do it alone, but it still can only go as fast as the slowest part of the assembly line.

 7. The most perfect form of peaches is in 3-ingredient cobbler.
Peaches on their own are delicious, but like most things they are improved with cake. And sure, peach pie is delicious, but in terms of result for effort expended, it's pretty hard to beat peaches, cake mix, and sprite. 

If it's not the most appetizing-looking picture, it's because I don't want you to be too jealous.

8. Work we must, but the peach is free. There is a lot of work that goes into any kind of gardening, but at the end of the day it isn't us that's actually growing the food. It's not like we're mixing the elements together and forming them into fruit and vegetables. All we do is make the conditions as ideal as possible for fruit to grow. And then, without any effort on our parts, it does.

And it sure is beautiful.