1) Start with fresh peaches (lots of fresh peaches)
2) Put sugar and water in clean bottles.
3) Peel the skins off the peaches, slice them up and fill the bottles with the peach slices.
4) Clean off the bottle tops, add a lid from the boiling pot and seal.
5) Fire up the stove outside so you don't super-heat your house.
6) Cook the bottles for 30 minutes to kill germs and seal the bottles.
7) Remove the cooled bottles and be amazed at what you've accomplished!
8) Go to bed and get some sleep. This is just the beginning and there is a lot more bottling to come over the next few weeks. These bottles were finished around 10:30 pm.
Obviously the process is much more difficult, technical and time consuming than what I've just explained. Fortunately for me, Michelle is becoming a master bottler and takes care of the details. I just do the grunt work of peeling and slicing peaches.
My favorite part of the process is to enjoy the fresh bowl of peaches (with milk and sugar). I look forward to that all year long. Honestly, I don't really eat that many (bottled) peaches during the year; but my boys do that quite well. They look forward to a bowl of fruit every day for lunch. So it's back to work to get all that fruit prepared for the coming year. Once we've finished the peaches we'll do pears; after that we still have tomatoes, corn and beans. And beyond that I'm not sure what else Michelle has planned for our family.
