More bottling!

As the stonefruit continues to ripen on the trees in the orchard, I've been busy with bottling for the last week. This time it's the small local peaches, known as Pahi River. This peach is small but tasty. I did have to use a peeler to remove the skin, but otherwise they weren't hard to prepare since I put them in whole. They are freestone however so for other purposes are easy to deal with.

The 'River' peach was 'discovered' locally in a farmer's paddock and saved by Kay Baxter, founder of the organisation known as Koanga Gardens which used to be in Kaiwaka. The River peach was the peach which started Kay on her journey to save NZ heirloom plants (for more on this see one of my earlier posts here). And it was Kay Baxter/Koanga that started us on our journey and for that we are very grateful.

I've put up 15 jars of the peaches so far and hoping to get a few more done as the last of the fruit ripens.

Not bad for a small tree that has only been in the ground for 4 years.