Peaches!

So those of you who talk to me regularly know that I have been on a bit of a local food crusade (I know, I know, how very trendy of me) these days. Well in my never-ending search for local fruit today Genevieve and I journeyed just a little north of Tucson to Catalina to pick peaches and apples from Howard’s Farm (an article from the Daily Star this week inspired me). I must confess I have never (at least not that I remember) gone to a u-pick-it farm before so I didn’t really know what to expect. We drove for about a ½ hour and then up a dirt road to a little plot of land in a rural, large lot, area of Catalina. We were greeted by Howard himself, who loaned me a wagon for Evie and told us any tree with a pink ribbon was fair game.

Genevieve and I spent about an hour there wandering through the orchard. I let her walk for most of that hour and she became quite adept at plucking peaches. I tried to direct her to the ripe looking ones, but given we both have the same amount of expertise in peach picking I mostly just let her take whichever peaches tickled her fancy. At one point she was a ways ahead of me and found an apple on the ground and just started chomping away at it… hey they are organic anyway so I just let her go crazy… plus something about her eating an apple essentially fresh from the tree warmed the heart cockles. Well that apple became a prized possession, and stayed in her hot little hands for the next three hours while I ran some errands and then around and about the house. I finally wrenched it from her hands just as she was going down for a nap… lucky for her we have a nice big bag of more!