Hundreds of Peaches, peaches for me...

I really love the fall. Post-graduation life means that the transition from summer to fall was subtle because my time is still so utterly unstructured and I didn't get new pencils and new teachers and a new crush (the little love I'm harboring now has been around a while...) Well, my early morning summer hikes with my Dad have spilled over into the fall as well and the other morning as we were walking we came upon a peach orchard in the middle of a construction site. The trees were laden with fruit that was clearly not actively being harvested or cared for. We called the owner of the land and though he said he couldn't give us his permission to pick the peaches, he also "couldn't stop us."

The next morning I awoke to my Dad asking if I'd smudged the grease under my eyes to prepare to be a sneaky peach bandit.

As we tip-toed between the trees (not because of feeling guilty, because the deer had been there first and left all kinds of presents), all I could think about was all the pies and pastries I could make with this many peaches. We were there for less than half an hour, but we took in a real haul. So much so that when I did get around to baking with them, I made a pie that used like a dozen peaches and it didn't look like our stash had even been touched. 

I watched James and the Giant Peach after the pie was done because there was no one there to eat it (and the most depressing thing you can ever do as a single person is to bake a pie totally from scratch and then eat it alone) and near the beginning of the movie when the little peach first becomes enchanted and begins to grow to be as large as house, I got sort of excited and thought "wow, what would you do with enough peach to eat for months like that?" And then I remembered I already had that much peach and it's not that exciting. It's mostly overwhelming; the clock is ticking and you know they'll spoil in a heartbeat. I probably should've figured a way for my peaches to take me to New York City like James' peach does. 

We decided to have a peach party to preserve all the fruit, which because everyone had other demands to take them away from the gathering eventually turned into a peach party of one. I didn't know anything about canning peaches before, but 10 hours later I'll never forget how it's done. My ward's family home evening that night was peach picking at some abandoned orchard in another town. Needless to say, I was a little peached-out and didn't attend. After making over 50 jars of peaches, we still have an entire box left. 

It was a long day and definitely not what I envisioned that fun, stealthy early-morning peach picking adventure would lead to. By the end of it, my back was aching and my heels were sore, but in little moments while I waited for the peaches to blanch or the jam to set I thought about how many women in the history of the world have had a lifetime of days so spent. Women that had food preparations and clean-up that never ended and could never just pull something out of the freezer to feed the family. It made me so grateful to not only have enough food, but to live in a time when being responsible for its preparation (whenever I am) doesn't occupy my whole life. It also puts a lot of pressure on how I use the volumes of extra time I've been given because I was born in an age of streamlining and efficiency and technology and born into a country with such abundance and wealth. It makes it that much more important to contribute something real to the world from my position of unearned privilege.

I guess what I'm trying to say is based on all the people bum-rushing peach orchards to harvest the last of the season's fruit, it is officially (and deliciously) autumn. My favorite time of the year.