Peach Pickin and Lavender Sniffin

My least favorite season in Texas is what we call "super summer" which is July and August. When you walk out of an airconditioned room into the great outdoors it feels like you walked into an oven! It's hot! When it gets into the 100's it's unbearable to do anything outside. Well, this year there was a little bit of a relief on a few weekends and we took advantage of it. A friend of ours told us about a place call U Pick Peaches, http://www.redriverpeachorchard.com/. It's up in the Gainesville, TX area, very close to Oklahoma. I love fresh picked fruit, but the last time I picked fruit was when I lived in Virginia and that's been several years ago, so I was happy to hear about this. It was a cool July Saturday in the low 90's and in Gainesville, high 80's. It felt like a cold front had come through. A perfect day for picking. It was also nice to spend time with just my husband since I had been so busy doing weddings all summer and haven't been around too much.

When we pulled up to the gate, it was just a house with a little store front out back that worked the peach picking business. They had homemade peach ice cream for sale, peach jams and jellies and free lemonide. Also a clean restroom...which is important, and a place where you can wash your hands afterwards. It was a perfect day! We met some people up there from our church that were picking as well.

Grab a bucket and go pick! They weigh the fruit, put it in a box and you pay...cash only.

 

They have something like 900 trees!

 

Tons to choose from

 

 

We picked three buckets full

 

After we picked our peaches, we headed to the Lavender Farm, which was about 15 minutes away. http://lavenderridgefarms.com.

 

 

This is where you cut Lavender, but we were there after the season had finished.

 

They have a small café and an outside eating part as well. All the food on the menu includes Lavender in their ingredients. We had Lavender infused iced tea and lemonade. We shared a trio salad that had some Lavender in it as well as gooey butter cake with Lavender sprinkled on top. Not my favorite accent to food, but it was nice to try.

 

They had this nice little gift shop where you can buy Lavender things. We bought Lavender musk soap which smelled so good.

 

It was a really nice little get-away for Scott and I. Of course we had our work cut out for us when we got home, peeling peaches, but we got that done and made some yummy things.

 

Peach freezer jam. I had no idea how easy that was.

 

Peach preserves. Yum!! Never made this before, but it was pretty easy as well. I just watched a YouTube video and taught myself. Now we have jam/preserves to share with others...as well as lots of frozen peaches.