Peaches and more…

This week starts off the tree fruits.  Anyone who was  a member last year remembers our fantastic supply of apricots, peaches, plums and cherries.  Last year was a warm spring with lots of heavy rains.  This is always good for tree crops, but bad for a lot of other produce.  This year was a complete opposite.  We had a warm early spring followed by days of frost.  So many crops budded out and began to grow, only to lose their buds and leaves in the frost.

This year will not be a great year for tree fruits.  While I am excited to see the first peaches and apricots of the season, I was saddened to hear that cherries are going to be very hard to come by along with many other tree fruits.  Apples this year were hit particularly hard.

But not to worry, we here at Fresh Fork Market will be working hard to find as much fresh and tasty fruit for our customers as we can, but overall there will be less Ohio fruit this year than in the past.   One winery warned us already that there won’t be much in the way of Concord grapes this season.

This is a great year to try some new ideas for jam and jellies.  Last year I made onion jam and tomato jam.  These were more savory items, but a sweet tomato jelly would be tasty!  You can make jellies from nearly anything and I remember fondly having cactus jelly from my grandmother and pepper jelly from my aunt.  This is a great year to think outside the box… I saw a corn cob jelly recipe and recipes for jams made from corn, green tomatoes, even cucumber.  And we love our beets and they were not affected by the frost.