Then I get my materials together: A large pot of boiling water on the stove. A sink full of ice water. A jar of honey. Lemons for juicing. A large ladle. Pint-sized freezer bags. And a huge bowl.

I start by pouring a gallon of water in the bowl. To this I add 1 cup of honey and 1 cup of freshly squeezed lemon juice, then stir until the honey is completely dissolved. (To put up fewer peaches, simply
divide the quantities.)

I place a half dozen peaches in the boiling water for one minute, then remove them with a slotted spoon and place them in the ice water. This blanching treatment loosens their skins, which slip right off.

Then, knife in one hand and peach in the other, I slice them over the big bowl, letting the slices drop into the syrupy water, where the lemon juice prevents them from oxidizing and turning brown. Then I go back to the sink for the next peach, and do this until my bushel of peaches is processed.

I ladle in a dessert’s worth of peach slices along with some liquid into a freezer bag.
I set the bag on the table and squeeze out air until the peaches are entirely covered by liquid. I shut each bag securely, and lay them all in the freezer.

Cut to a cold January night. I take a rock-hard bag of peaches from the freezer and place it in a bowl of warm water while I’m making dinner. When I’m ready to serve dinner, I place the just-thawed peaches and some of the honey-lemon-water syrup in which they were frozen (they still have a few ice crystals among the slices) in bowls, then go to the freezer for some of the wild black raspberries, wineberries, blackberries, blueberries, and huckleberries that I picked and froze last summer, and toss them into the bowls, mixing them in with the peaches. By dessert time, all the fruits are thawed but still cold. All organic and fabulously summery in the dead of winter. This has become a ritual. With the radio on, an afternoon’s pleasant work becomes a year’s worth of ripe organic peaches.