Peach Picking

Last weekend Lance and I went with some friends of ours to go peach picking at Schnepf Farms, one of the local farms in our area that offers u-pick produce (if you are looking for some in your area, check out www.pickyourown.com – it has a listing by state of all u-pick farms). 

I always love to stop and take a look at the sunflowers!

When we got to the farm we had to wait in line for one of the tractors to take us over to the peach orchards

The line happened to be right next to where they were handing out free bottles of Minute Maid pomegranate lemonade!

Once we arrived at the orchard we headed as far from the crowds as possible. We managed to find an entire row with no one picking peaches – we had it all to ourselves!

Most of the peaches were perfectly ripe – we couldn’t resist and ate one right off the tree. It was so good!

After we finished up with the peach picking, Jessica and I went over to the apricot trees to pick some of those too.

There weren't many left on the trees so we only picked about a half a pound of apricots before we met back up with the guys.

Each year the farm hosts a peach festival for a few weekends during the month of May. We planned our peach picking trip to coincide with the festival so we could spend a little more time checking out the farm.

After picking our peaches, we headed over to the main part of the farm where all of the festival activities were happening. We started with a peach pancake breakfast – they were delicious giant pancakes topped with fresh sliced peaches. Yum!

We walked around for a bit and checked out the peach tasting pavilion. This tent was loaded with tables topped with various peach goodies. Everything from peach rings to peach butter to peach salad dressing. As you went through you could purchase any of the peach goods you sampled.

I ended up taking home about 25 pounds of peaches – so I have been diligently working on transforming them into fabulous things…like ice cream, BBQ sauce and peach pie filling :) I’ve got plenty of yummy peach recipes coming up in the near future!