eat
SUMMER RECIPES
BUTTERFLIES + PEACHES Words by Maureen McGuire | Photos by Cat Mayer
F
rom April to autumn, I have butterflies in
I don’t know if other people in the valley
my stomach because of peaches. There is
have quite the same emotional range towards
something deep in my being that connects the
peaches, but I have always believed that places
health of the peach trees and the harvest to our
and the types of food grown there have the
community. This year, as with most years, the
power to bring diverse people together in a deep
fear of a devastating freeze makes the peach
communal way. The money I spend on peaches
butterflies in my stomach flutter furiously. Every
grown here strongly ties my nutritional well-
April, I ask my friend Heather about the peach
being to a person’s livelihood that is part of my
trees. Her partner grows peaches for a living,
community that I interact with every day. The
and every year, I buy several boxes of peaches
jam I make in the fall from those peaches goes
to eat and put up.
to other people in my community at Christmas.
My stomach butterflies flutter in May and June, because, depending on last year’s crop and
grow peaches in our community.
how well I planned, I’m trying to make the last
Every time I open my weekly jar of peaches,
quarts of peaches and jars of jam I canned last
I am so thankful for the peaches my friends have
until the earliest peaches are ready. In July and
grown and the work that my students’ parents
August, they flutter in anticipation for all of the
give for our peach harvest in the valley. When I
fresh peaches I eat in copious amounts as they
eat peaches, they are that much sweeter because
come in. In early autumn, they flutter, because
of the community that goes into growing that
school has started, and then, it’s the end of the
peach.
season, and the canning weekends fly away.
22
I teach the children of some of the people who
