roadside peaches part one the purchase

Returning from the trip to Whiteville, I saw a road side stand with huge signs for peaches. I decided to go back today and get a bushel, which is about 50 pounds. The stand also had tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, green tomatoes, snap beans, and a shelf of preserves and honey setup in the bed of truck.

I had pulled up when no one else was around, but soon the place was covered with older folks, business men in suits, county maintenance workers and a variety of others. Some were looking for deals, others a quick lunch.

The man was excited to see me and everyone else, a trait that I’m sure is part sales and part real enthusiasm about selling peaches and such. I told him I was only interested in peaches, lots of peaches. He told me the small box was $4 (for about 2 pounds) and the large basket was $6 (for about 5 pounds). I told him what I wanted; he thought about it, and then went to the truck for a big crate full of massive peaches. He threw in a “large basket” off the display table plus a couple strays. I called it close enough to a bushel, and he asked for $36.

It is times like this when I would usually insist on paying more money, mainly because I know about margins and such and what it actually costs to grow a peach around here. I felt this especially when other folks at the table were whispering about how $6 was far too much for a little basket of peaches. That basket held a lot of nutrition for $6, but I wasn’t about to argue the point to a bunch of suits and working class folks on their lunch break.

Back to the old argument about how produce is so expensive in, well, the eyes of a majority of people, yet crappy processed food is consumed all day and night for equivalent prices and minimal nutrition. Right now at the co-op you can get a one pound container of ripe red organic strawberries from California for $2.99. At Harris-Teeter you can get a two pound container of white and sort-of red conventional berries, no doubt still coated in methyl bromide, from Chile for the same price. With the later you get twice as many berries, of sub-par quality, from three times as many miles away, for half the price.

Once the trimming is done, a person might get a pound of berries with a quarter of the flavor, yet the organic berries are way still too expensive for most folks. Those folks will make very audible comments about the prices while loading up their carts with sugar sugar sugar, salt salt salt, processed processed processed, blah blah blah. This makes me crazy, especially the part about how far those berries have traveled, and how they are still cheaper than the California berries. This equation is broken, and folks don’t even care what the inputs are. What costs have been passed on into other forms of payment and recovery? We’ll get into that some other time, but for now we’ll get back to the local peaches…

There is nothing like canning when the heat index is 105 degrees. Unfortunately, many of the rules of fresh produce dictate that the preserving happens when the fruit or vegetable is coming out of the fields or trees in summer. When the peaches came home it was time to get to work.

First, the quarts of peach halves. Second, the pints and half pints of peach sauce. Both processes are fairly easy if only time consuming and hot. Instructions coming in the next part…