ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT PEACH PICKING

Well, it was a beautiful, sunny day and finally finally, peaches were ready for picking. (or so it said on the Cider Hill Farm website). I actually called around to a few places to make sure peaches were ready. But most places said it was a still a week off. Cider Hill said they had peaches, though.

And so we drove up to Amesbury. I was plannning on making a peach tarte tatin as part of Juliet's birthday dinner. And we wanted to get peaches so Katie could make a peach pie. Here's a lovely shot of the fields at Cider Hill farms. (goregous day huh?). We had to hike up that path on the left, past the grove of trees and off to the right to get to the peach trees.

So we get all the way up there, and sure, there were plenty of peaches, but none of them were ripe. It was still too early. I think if we'd come a week of two later, it'd be perfect, but perhaps the peach picking gods are against me this year. After searching around for 15 minutes, and Tom breaking a tree in half (or rather just ripping off a large branch), we had gathered about 6 peaches and gave up. I decided to just buy some peaches down at the well stocked farm store.
Here's another shot of the farm house on the way back from the trees.

Luckily, the farm house was pretty impressive. Mainly because they were making fresh cider donuts, lots and lots of them. Here they are coming out of the fryer.

And here they sit, getting ready to be sold. We ended up getting half a dozen (they're no good the second day). And i was happy to find these cider donuts really well made and not greasy at all. (The last time i had a cider donut, last fall, it was totally greasy and gross and made me sick).

I was also able to pick up some ingredients for Juliet birthday dinner. Like fresh corn. And I did get a bag of peaches, which were still not super ripe, but good enough. It turns out it doesn't make a huge difference when you're cooking them anyway.

Katie's pie turned out very pretty. She did a lattice top. Unfortunately I didn't get any. Tom and I were supposed to be "sharing" but he'd finished off the slice before i got a chance to have any. (he does love pie). I did have some of my peach tarte tatin, though, and that was very good. I just love puff pastry. And you can't go wrong with caramel sauce. As for peach picking, I'm looking foward to better luck in the fall with apple picking.