It's Peachy....

Friday morning, I bought peaches in South Jersey for St. M’s Third Annual Peach Festival and Churchyard Sale. The peaches are beautiful this year.

Here’s some good news. The Zee peach farm has not been sold to Walmart. It has been sold to Rowan College (formerly Glassboro State). Somehow this seems like a nobler land use to me.


My first job was packing peaches on the Zee’s Farm. My brother and cousins picked the trees in the orchard. Two cute college guys drove the fork lift truck in the warehouse. They brought boxes of peaches from the fields to the conveyer belt and took away the packed and "ringed" peaches to be stored in the cooler. We could eat as many peaches as we wanted on our breaks and take a bag home at night. Another day, another blog entry - my search for the "perfect" peach.








It is hard to visit the area and see the sprawl. New housing developments are named for fruit and animals and habitat they have displaced. There are fewer working truck farms in the Garden State. . I cheer each time I see a Gloucester County farm preservation sign.

My Grandparents and four Aunts moved across the Delaware River to live here in Elk Township after World War II. Five households. We were visitors. Literally, coming "over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house". We took the Chester-Bridgeport Ferry.

Which farm produce stand had the sweetest corn? best Jersey tomatoes? juiciest peaches?
My aunts knew. Respectively, Mood’s, Sorbello’s and Heritage Farms. The real trouble begins in the Fall when the apples are harvested!

Two years ago, Carol B. asked if I’d ever heard of anyone else doing a Peach Festival. I said sure but could not name a single church or fire company or women’s club that held one. So today...there it was ---the Methodist Church in Richwood is holding their Peach Festival tonight.

And of course, tomorrow-- Saturday, August 18th,
St. Margaret’s holds it’s Third Annual Peach Festival. That’s the corner of Keystone and Elm in Emmaus.
The pies are waiting!!