Peaches in the spring

RedneckContributor - March 21, 2021

Sometimes prepping is beautiful.  A big part of my prepping are my perennials.  I grow all sorts, mostly apples but also pears, Asian persimmons, pecans, blueberries, blackberries, muscadine grapes, jujubi, asparagus… and peaches which are blooming now.  IMO, few things are as beautiful and taste so great when ripened on the tree.  Was spraying the orchard & roses today and just had to take some pictures.

36  

Gorgeous! I hope this is going to be a good peach year. We certainly got the chilling hours for it!

 

I hope so too.  It is now thought that temps below 32 don’t count for chilling hours.  The best temps are 35 -50 to accumulate chilling hours.  That is why my location here in north Mississippi gets as many chilling hours as places in say Michigan.

 

Just beautiful Redneck, a welcome sight and thank you for sharing these photos.

An orchardist in the Okanagan once said: A peach isn’t ready to eat until you bite into it and the juice runs down your arm. Then he demonstrated for everyone.

 

Yep, a juicy peach ripened fully on the tree is something special.  Never will find that in the stores.

 

Forgot to ask what kind of peaches are you growing?

What passes for peaches in the stores are flavourless and so hard you could use one to pitch the world series of baseball.

I did get doughnut peaches for a couple of years. Haven’t seen them lately, but they actually were nice and had flavour.

 

I grow both yellow & white peaches.  I prefer the white as they are incredibly sweet.  My wife is a purist & prefers yellow.  The white peaches are White Lady and the yellow are Elberta & Red Haven.  Here is a pic from last year.  One of the benefits of cutting grass in the orchard is stopping by the trees & sampling.  When the apples are ripe, I can eat myself sick.

 

Oh, those are glorious photos!  I can see how you graze while mowing. I would eat my way out of there.

I miss fresh apples (and other fruit) from the orchards in BC.

Thank you for sharing these photos. A welcome visual feast for the eyes.

 

Here is some older pics of me grazing blueberries while cutting grass.  

 

Do the chickens or dogs steal some of your blueberries?

 

Oh yes!   But that is part of living in harmony with nature.  The chickens would get all the very ripe ones that fell to the ground & would reach up & pick lower hanging ones.  My black lab is very discerning.    He gets in there & carefully chooses the most choice berries and takes just those.

But I no longer have any chickens.  I’ve just had too many get killed thru the years by predators, even with the fencing & netting above.  Foxes & coyotes are just impossible to keep out.  My wife wants me to replace them but it just hurts my soul to see them hurt & killed.  I sure miss them.  They would come up & sit in my lap while I watched them pecking & scratching.

 

Sorry to hear about your chickens, that would be sad to see them killed. What are some things you can do to protect them besides fencing and netting? 

I’m hoping to get some chickens someday and that is a concern for me.

 

Netting is critical.  Mine used to roam around the whole orchard… until hawks killed several.

Unless you bury your fencing & do an incredible job of closing off all gaps between the fencing & the netting… predators will find a way to get in.  I couldn’t do that because my birds had access to my blueberry patch, so that they could have unlimited grass.  Their coop I built was very secure which is critical because most predators, except for hawks & eagles, hunt at night.  The chickens would always go into the coop at night because they are night blind.

The problem is when night time predators start acting strange… such as coons hunting during the day.  Foxes will also sometimes hunt during the day.  My last birds were killed by I think a fox.  It carried the dead bird to the back corner of the muscadine patch, where it had somehow squeezed between the corner post & the fencing… a very narrow gap.  The gap was so narrow, I found the dead chicken wedged in there.

My suggestion is to keep your chickens close to the house.  Maybe that will deter the predators.  I don’t believe in locking chickens up where they can’t have access to grass & bugs.  The problem is EVERYTHING loves to eat chicken… and they have no fight instinct except for maybe a rooster.  I found that I couldn’t find a happy medium where the birds could live a natural, healthy life… and where I could keep them safe.

Many animals have a fight or flight instinct.  You mess with a dog & his first instinct is to fight… to bite you.  Mess with a horse, and his first instinct is flight… to run like the wind.  Mess with a chicken… and it dies.  Yes they will try to run off but they aren’t very good at doing so.  Their survival method is to out reproduce what predators will take.  That is why they can lay around 5 eggs a week.

 

How sad for your chickens. Did you know that chickens will register emotional distress if one of the flock is removed or sold for example? I just saw this on a documentary. They are affectionate also, a quality that I don’t think many people place upon them.

I just read that aplacas and donkeys placed with the chickens will protect them from predators.

Also those blueberries and blackberries!

I am going to be dreaming of fruit and cobbler and preserves and jam…

I will say yet again: you are so lucky!

 

I know donkeys are used to protect cows from coyotes and similar.  They hate all dogs… even pets.  However, I have my doubts if they would worry with something as small as a racoon or even a fox.  Some folks keeps dogs with the flocks but that wouldn’t work here.  All our dogs end up living in the house with us & wouldn’t think of going out if it was raining.  🙂

Some of our chickens were affectionate.  I guess you could call it that.  I mostly think they were glad to see me since I gave them scratch every day, plus other treats.  They eat raisins like it is crack cocaine.  

 

We are thinking of getting some guinea fowl along with our chickens. They are said to be good watch dogs, have great eye sight, and keep an eye out for predators. They have a distinct call that they make when they see danger. Hopefully the chickens will pickup and learn from them and be able to get to safety if the guineas are going crazy. 

Won’t help much if a predator breaks into their coop and they are cornered, but could maybe protect against a sneak attack.

Thanks for the tips Redneck.

 

Just watch out.  Guineas will make a racket at any time of the day or night & they like to wander.  My dad had some once & he had to get rid of them.  They can really cause issues with neighbors.  My experience is nothing protects a chicken from a sneak attack… except maybe having a flockmate get attacked instead.  They really are clueless & helpless.  But as I said, they make up for that deficiency my reproducing like crazy.

 

Did you have a rooster with them? A good rooster can be good protector for hens. An alternativevcould be a good dog. I have a border terrier and I had no problems with him around my chooks. He was taught a lesson early on by a silkie rooster and never bothered them after that. If the dog knows his job is protecting hens it could deter other predators.

 

No, didn’t have a rooster and if I do again, will probably get one.  However, an employee of mine has a flock with roosters and they haven’t helped any.  A trained dog is best, without a doubt, but with all our dogs up at the house, there is just no way my wife would try to keep one down with the chickens.  What probably would happen is I move the coop up into our backyard and fence off an enclosure there.  9 dogs have 24 hour access in the backyard.

 

Redneck, Besides the great fruit, the pictures are beautiful !

 

Thanks Bob.  These are my first pics since getting the iPhone 12 Mini.  It was time to change as I was using an iPhone 6 and it wouldn’t charge anymore.  I do love the wireless charging!

 

Thanks for sharing those pictures. Prepping sure is beautiful at times. One of the most beautiful prepping things I’ve ever seen in person was my grandmother’s basement with wall to wall hand canned apples, pears, and peaches and homemade strawberry, apricot, and raspberry jam.

I’m jealous of your weather right now. I woke up to another foot of snow. 

 

You are welcome.  I thought some of you northerners might appreciate them.  On the other end of the blooming spectrum would be my blueberries.  They put out lots of tiny blooms that aren’t very showy… but the bees just love them.  Need to get a better pic this year.

Yes, I put up lots of quarts of applesauce.  My wife makes all sorts of jams & jellies using our blueberries, blackberries & muscadines.  I love her apple butter.  Here is an old pic of my canned peaches.  Just almost sinful to put them over vanilla ice cream in the middle of winter.

Yep, we are in full spring here.  Temps this week are running around 70.  Supposed to be near 80 this Saturday.

 

Beautiful pictures. I love the photo of the bee and blossom.

And the peaches in jars! That got me drooling, then you mentioned vanilla ice cream! I have to go find a cloth to wipe my keyboard.

How I envy your climate for gardening. This Northerner just put her heat up and is looking forward to May long weekend for planting. Some years we have to wait longer. I had to replant some things last year because we got a late blast of cold air.

 

As a prepper, and gardener, a long growing season is very nice.  Down side obviously would be long, hot, humid summers.  But I much prefer such summers to the frigid winters when we lived in North Dakota.  For us, generally April 15 is our summer planting date.  I like to get my sweet corn in as soon as possible.  If you wait too long, the corn ear worms can be a problem.

Yes, those canned peaches in syrup are to die for.  We don’t grow them, but we also put up strawberries.  My wife’s strawberry jam also is incredible over vanilla ice cream.

Don’t know why but I am just fascinated watching the bees.  Those peach trees are just loaded with all sorts of bees.  My favorite are the bumblebees.  They are so big & inquisitive.  They are much better pollinators than honey bees.

 

A greenhouse or some kind of solarium for growing is on my wish list. I like being around plants and working with them. And the bees are amazing to watch.

It is a whole other world when one is immersed in gardening, plants and the insect world.

I can imagine how those peach trees would be loaded with the bees. All those blossoms and the blueberry blossoms are such a feast for them.

Okay homemade strawberry jam on vanilla ice cream – my mind just turned it into a banana split with my Aunt Grace’s homemade ice cream made with farm cream, my Mom’s saskatoon (like blueberry) jam, your wife’s strawberry jam and our Jersey cows whipped cream.

Now I am full and don’t need lunch.

 

You need to do a good ol’ dutch oven peach cobbler with those peaches.

Used to make them as scouts. Put a boxed cake mix in your dutch oven and pour a can of canned peaches over top. That’s it! Somehow it mixes all in together by itself while cooking and is to die for.

Jealous of those temps!

 

Robert,

Oh man, I just got my keyboard dried off. LOL.

Cobbler! I love cobbler!

 

Sorry about that. I owe you a new keyboard….

 

Don’t you worry.  My wife makes the world’s best cobblers using our fruits & berries right from the trees & bushes.  I really don’t know if my favorite is blackberry or peach.  Sometimes, she puts both in the same cobbler.  But oh my, hot, homemade cobbler straight from the oven with vanilla ice cream, where the ice creams starts to melt.  Good Lord, that makes me hungry just thinking about it.

This one has both peach & blackberries… but no ice cream.  We were all out.  🙂

Blackberries do great down here.  Mine are all thornless.

 

I had to look at the cobbler and blackberries before breakfast.

Those blackberries are huge and so beautiful!

 

They are so easy to grow.  Only hard part is in the summer when I have to cut out all the 2 year old canes, the ones that had berries on them, to make room for the new canes.  At this time they are very crowded.

I just grow a single, short row of them.  They are supported by two lower wires & 2 upper wires on the trellis.  But that one row will be absolutely covered, top to bottom, with berries.  That one row gives us all the blackberries we use in a year.  Was planning on a 2nd row but didn’t need it.

This is from last spring.

 

Robert, Your grandmother’s basement sounds beautiful. My mom’s jars of canning bring back good memories for me, too.

As I told Redneck below, I just turned my heat up.

I feel for you with the dump of snow. We get years like that too. This year wasn’t as much snow, but now they are talking drought. 

Our gardening turn will come.

 

I am in the middle of peach season. Also figs and apples.

 

LBV – Lovely! Are those peaches in a different kind of syrup on the left? You are lucky to have figs. They are so good.

 

That is actually their natural colour. They are traditionally known in NZ as Blackboy Peaches. Nurseries are trying to change the name to Sanguine, but they still use formally known as blackboy. It has a greyish/pink skin with crimson flesh. It is very disease resistant. Locals keep the seed and deliver them to the local nursery for rootstock, because most rootstock is Golden Queen which is probably the least disease resistant.

 

LBV, How interesting! Thank you for telling me about them. What a bonus that they are disease resistant also. I would imagine that they would make for an beautiful looking dessert when used alone or with other fruit/peaches.

Happy canning!