Peaches

Okay, so canning peaches takes a lot longer than I thought. My first time ever, by myself that is. Here's what I learned:

plan on 20 quarts taking several hours (read: 6-8 hours)
a half bushel (one of those boxes without lids) makes about 12 bottles
when blanching the peaches, it doesn't work very well with unripe peaches. . .  make sure they're ripe, but not over ripe.
don't need an $80 pressure cooker to can peaches, just a $20 water bath canner
put the same temperature of water in the canner that the peaches are (I cold packed them)
even though it only takes 35 minutes (at 4000 feet) to water bathe them, it takes another 25 minutes to get them boiling
only 7 cans fit in the water bath canner, not 12 :)

All in all a great experience and I can't stop staring at those pretty peaches!!

on a side note, I had a lot of peaches so I also froze a bunch. Cut them up, and freeze them on trays before putting them in freezer bags. . . yummy smoothies later :)