Peaches can’t be shipped or stored. So they’re still a local crop, letting some local farmers survive. (Almost all the rest are gone.)
It’s the fall peach harvest time. Summer ones were awhile ago.
Man, they’re GREAT! Just the best. We’re going nuts over em. Our local orchard is all emptied of them now.
If you only see peaches at the store you have NO IDEA what we’re talking about here.
Fresh, soft, juicy, pure sugar and flavor. I mean chest-drenching juicy.
Our fall crop of everbearing red raspberries is still going strong. Another fragile fruit.
Raspberries and cherries also can’t be decently imported—so they’re local Michigan crops that are still providing, surprise!, livelihoods for Michigan people.
Apples and pears are rolling now—cider time. But those crops don’t support more than a couple locals—Asia has those markets now.
My uncles showed me how to eat a peach in one bite when I was a kid. I worked at their orchard with the migrants. That was hard work. We never could keep up with the migrants. And we never got tired of peaches. We’d work our butts off for a half hour then have a peach. Oh yeah! It was such “character” work that I talked some of my friends into doing it with me various summers: low pay, extreme effort, tasty peaches and stories and good times like you won’t believe! It was an easy sell. My crazy uncles and cousins did the trick. Talk about spice! That’s how you make hard work fun: the human factor!
Here’s a pic of some uncles and a cousin. By day they were firemen, cop, EMT, scuba-rescuer, popcorn stand operator, rattlesnake rasslers…by night they were coonhunters and smelt-dippers…by the rest of the days they ran the orchard! Not many hours left that way…
