My ninety-four-year-old father is fond of telling the tale of the famous Brilliant peach. A peach so fragile and so juicy that it couldn’t be shipped anywhere. In fact, you had to either pick it yourself, right off the tree at Nassau Orchards in Lewes, Delaware, or grab a quart of the just-harvested peaches at the orchard’s farm stand, owned by his longtime friends, the Knapp family.
The problem with this story (other than its frequency of repetition), is that Dad forgets that my sister and I were always with him on the trips out to Knapps’, as we called it, to get just-picked corn, giant beefsteak tomatoes, and those famous peaches.
At home – which was a sandy-floored beach cottage for the summer – my mother would slice one for each of us into a shallow dish and pour a glug of 42-percent-butterfat Lewes Dairy heavy cream all over. Depending on whether this was breakfast or dessert, a sprinkling of sugar – completely unnecessary – landed on top. This was the way my father’s mother served the peaches, and there would be no varying from tradition.
Not that there was any reason to stray from this near-perfect concoction. The honeysuckle fragrance hit you first, followed by the balanced sweet-tart flavor, and, finally, the glorious mingling of peach juices with heavy cream. It was, at least in my memory, about as good as it gets. I’ve never had peaches like those anywhere or any time since.
And for the record, Georgia is not the only state famous for its peaches. Though tiny Delaware’s production is fairly low now, in 1895, Delaware was reported to have grown more peaches than anywhere else in the world. Though a peach tree disease knocked those numbers way back many years ago, there are still thriving peach farms in the state.
Enough about Delaware, you say. What about the Vineyard? Is it possible to grow a good peach on this crazy Island of wind and salt, cold and fog? Absolutely.
When I moved to my (now) husband’s home in West Tisbury several years ago, I noticed he hadn’t done much gardening since he’d moved into the place. The grass was mowed, but that was about it.
It seemed to me that the first problem was what to do with a chain-link fence attached to the garage. Enclosing a former goat pen, the fence was in a direct line of sight from the back deck. Lovely to look at. At first, I plotted to plant shrubs to obscure it. But I realized this would only be a Band-Aid. One evening, when we were sitting on the deck, I said, “I think that thing needs to come down.”
That was all he needed to hear. In two weekends’ time, he took the fence down, digging up the cement posts and hacking and dragging away the entrenched bittersweet vines as well. Once the view was clear, something else came into focus: a small tree in a large black plastic pot, apparently purchased by the former owners, plopped down behind the garage, and abandoned. It was growing sideways towards the light. Neither of us knew what it was, and we weren’t sure it could be moved – the roots had clearly grown through the bottom of the plastic.
Spring came and went. The tree flowered and we wondered aloud if it was a cherry. We paid it no mind that summer. It was just part of the landscape. Finally, one day the next summer, I happened to walk over to it, look up, and see an unripe peach. More like several peaches.
I was ecstatic, and ran into the house to exclaim to my husband, “We have a peach tree!” Part of my rural fantasy has always included an orchard, but even one fruit-bearing tree is okay with me. Given my nostalgia for peaches, I was amazed to find a peach tree growing right under my nose. A sign, of course, that this was meant to be my home!
I waited for the peaches to ripen. I think I tied some kind of translucent fabric around each one to keep the squirrels off, probably after we lost a few. But I had my doubts about what they’d taste like. In the end we got three perfectly ripe, fragrant peaches. I cut into the first, and to my surprise it was a white peach – very sweet and very juicy. And not mushy! A total winner. I hope I shared the other two with my husband, but I don’t remember. The next year we got six beauties. This year we had tent caterpillars in early spring. They destroy the leaves, but we caught them early. Still, as of this writing, I’m not seeing much in the way of fruit. It might be an off year.
Someday I hope we can find a way to move the peach tree to a sunnier spot. If we can, I’ll try to follow Island fruit grower Joe Chapman’s advice. He says the four main things to do for peach trees are: prune, fertilize, water, and spray (with organic spray, of course).
And then, when we have oodles of peaches, I will make peach ice cream.
Because peach ice cream is the only other thing we did with those Brilliant peach. We didn’t bake them into cobblers or pies, because they were so good raw. But my grandmother had an old hand-crank ice cream maker, and I remember my dad and uncle packing the rock salt and ice around the cannister. I think I got to take a turn at cranking it before it really started to thicken up. We ate the ice cream on the front porch of that sandy beach cottage, with the lightning bugs buzzing around and the flashing red and green lights of the harbor entrance bouncing across the bay and the spartina-clad dunes.
These days I use an electric ice cream maker (a Cuisinart Pure Indulgence two-quart model) to freeze ice cream. But I stick to tradition and make real custard-based ice cream. There are lots of shortcut, lower-calorie, and otherwise delicious alternative ice cream recipes out in the world. But to me, it’s not ice cream if it doesn’t have a base of eggs, cream, and sugar. I also think homemade ice cream is a wonderful way to showcase ripe summer fruit. I make strawberry and black raspberry ice cream as well as peach ice cream at least once a summer.
And no, you don’t have to grow your own peaches to make this ice cream. Morning Glory Farm in Edgartown carries a nice selection (including some of their own farm-grown) and North Tisbury Farm in West Tisbury not only carries Chapman’s Menemsha-grown peaches, but they also bring in the famous goldbud variety from California.
And who knows, maybe someday I’ll have enough to share!
