Nancy, both of those fruits freeze really well, I just pit the cherries, peel and slice the peaches and freeze them, I don't add sugar or anything else. Both items also can well in a boiling water bath.

Either fruit can be eaten after canning just by themselves or in fruit salad, as can frozen fruit. Frozen fruit makes smoothies and can be added to sauces and things like pork chops or tenderloin, chicken dishes and brisket, stirred into oatmeal or turned into a "salsa" type condiment that's nice served with grilled salmon.

What a nice problem to have!

Annie

Fermentation of the juice is my favorite preservation method lol.

Second favorite for what I don't freeze... flavored syrups for mixing with seltzer, ades, and yep, you guessed it... mixed drinks lol.

Lucky you Nancy! Ever tried making wine or "medicinal tonics" as grandma used to call them? And like rgreen fermenting - fermented fruit toppings make wonderful desserts. You can also make pickled chutneys with both of them and if frozen plain they can be used in all kinds of baking recipes.

Like pie? Make pies and freeze them to bake later. Like syrups for pancakes, waffles, ice cream topping, etc. They both make great syrup.

Then there is dehydrating. Dried fruits can store for months.

Dave

Oh! My! Thank you all! Gotta start studying!

Just found out we also have a qince (sp) tree! Nancy

Hmmm, I've never had a quince, so that should be interesting too! We had a pretty hard freeze last week, the farmers are projecting that about 90% of the apple, peach and cherry crop here is lost. :(

Annie

Hmmmmmmm, fermenting sounds like an interesting thought! Any recipes or sites for that? Nancy

Nancy, you live in the "real" wine country and you're going to make wine from peaches and cherries? They'll run you right out of the vineyards! (grin)

Annie

Fermenting can be done multiple ways. All fruit, and well everything, has wild yeast spores on it's surfaces. You can use wild yeast, or cultivated yeasts. The flavor characteristics of wild yeasts however, cannot be known until after they begin growing. Some yield 'off' flavors, some are quite good, and some are excellent. One of the best fermented products I ever made was a blackberry and sugar mixture I made fresh as a pancake topping. I used some, and put the rest in a tupperware container in the fridge. Somehow it got pushed to the back and I forgot about it for a while... whoops lol. A few weeks later, looking for a quick snack while running out the door, I opened the container to see what was in it... it turned from its original thick-ish consistency to a more liquidy stuff with chunks of unmashed fruit. I thought surely it can't be good and smelled it... sure enough, it smelled of a fruit brandy. I didn't have time... and back it went lol.

A week or 2 later I was selling raspberries at a farmers market and a winery had a booth set up. I asked him about it. He told me that as long as no oxygen had got in there, and no signs of mold, that it was more than likely safe. The CO2 produced from the fermentation would kill molds and stop bad stuff from growing.

I went home and tried it... it was delicious!

So, you can try wild yeasts, or cultivated, or both. If you want to let a batch go with wild yeast, don't wash it. Most of the wild yeasts will be on the surface of the skins. There are wild yeasts in the air (as anyone who knows about San Francisco sour dough can tell you,) but to ferment, you'll be isolating the fruit from air and oxygen.

You'll want to mash the fruit. The degree of mashing depends on your final product. One time I used a juicer to juice lots, and lots, and lots of pears. It made great wine, but was far too much work for the amount I made.

One of my favorites, and as annie suggests, the easiest way to deal with a whole tree (or more) of fruit is to make wine. Lots of ways to extract the juice. All ending up with the same idea... letting yeast do its thing.

If you want to use cultivated yeast, especially where you live, just visit a winery, buy a bottle, talk a bit to the people there about what you hope to do and I bet they'll just give you a few grams of yeast. Oh, and try not to get over-whelmed... there's an entire world of yeasts and yeast affectionados.

If you do use a cultivated yeast, there are ways to kill off the wild yeasts and bacteria. And that's the thing about cultivated yeasts, not only are the flavor characteristics known, but they are bred for their vigor. Most will out-compete anything else, and the alcohol and CO2 they produce will kill the baddies. However, some yeasts, especially those used to bring out the flavor of fruits, are a bit more gentle, and additives like sulfites are first used to treat the fruit to kill off wild yeasts and bacteria. Some people boil the fruit in its juice, but that's not easy with large batches.

So, are there recipes? Wow... lots! There are many recipes and more methods than you could imagine. The basics though, are simple... sanitation, sweetness and sugar, yeast, and let CO2 escape without letting oxygen in.

Like with that first 'mistake' I described above, I've purposefully made wine in the fridge with berries. A clean vessel (like a tupperware container with a very tight fitting lid,) a little sugar (depending on the sweetness of the fruit and the desired finished product,) and 'burping' the container to let out the CO2.

And not all finished products will have a lot of alcohol. All will have some, but some are very weak and will not preserve on their own - they need to be consumed quickly. Other yeasts are so strong that you can get up to 18% alcohol. Unless you 'jack' the result and concentrate the flavors and alcohol together though, that's usually too strong for most fruit.

Sorry this was so long, fermenting is really an entire thing of its own. Before refrigeration, fermenting was THE WAY to preserve fruits. Fresh apples, as an example, were an in-season produce only. The vast majority of fruit was fermented, often jacked, and drank throughout the year. It was so important in the early days of pioneering that apple jack was used as legal tender. It was what homesteaders used to purchase supplies, and to trade for actual cash.

Oh, and I should add... be careful about how you process the fruit into juice. Many fruits, including peaches and cherries, have toxins in their seeds and pits. When I juiced the pears I had to core every pear before running through the juicer. My hands - from washing and coring (I used a common, vigorous, cultivated champagne yeast - ec 1118 - for that batch) - were trashed, lol. They hurt for 2 weeks.

It's not always a big thing with a few fruit seeds, but when you're making huge batches and dealing with lots of seeds, you'll want to keep the pits unscratched as much as possible. It's not a big deal really, especially with large-ish pits like peaches and cherries, just something to keep in mind.

Thank you all for your thoughts! I have been pitting and freezing like crazy and also giving a bunch away! The birds have also discovered the tree, and we can't reach a lot of the tree, so we'll end up with a couple of gallons for this year (pitted and frozen for now!)

We're going to make a cherry/balsamic pork dish tomorrow! That's a start! Nancy

And the cherry/balsamic "salsa" was delish! Unfortunately, for this year, the cherries are almost done (due to the birds!)

We'll have to figure out how to net the tree and climb up in there for next year!

Coming next.....peaches! NT

Nancyjane, good luck on beating the birds to the cherries. I have two trees and seldom get any cherries at all. The fruit is ripening one day and I think "I will be able to pick that in a couple of days, maybe a week". The instant they turn red, the birds eat them, before they're even fully ripe. (sigh) I've tried netting them, but it's impossible. I've tried fake owls and shiny streamers and motion sensing sprinklers and radios and recorded "birds of prey" calls. Nada. I'd have to hire someone to "guard" the trees 24 hours a day...

Annie

I had a friend who went through like a brick of firecrackers trying to keep the birds off his... other than his kid having fun, it didn't work, they still got most of them lol.

There's someone in the next county over who has built a huge enclosure of bird netting and grows all manner of berries inside. It works, but it'd have to be way huge for a cherry tree.

The only way I think that works is to plant more than they can eat. I suppose though, that the birds will send out invites.

Planting more than they can eat won't work, cause our new yard is really tiny!

We'll just have to plan next year to net and pick at the right time!

I was able to pick, pit and freeze only a couple of gallons (gave away a bunch) so we can have a couple of pies. Live and learn!

Next up is the peach tree! Just learned that they should be trimmed and the fruits reduced down to one peach every 6 inches! I wish this paper would inform us several weeks BEFORE things need to be done! NT

Yeah, a few reads or posts on the Fruit & Orchards forum can help learn proper pruning if you don't yet know. Culling of fruit is really the only way to get fruit larger than a golf ball. The tree will abort some on it's own, but culling is important. I always think I'm losing valuable fruit, but the opposite is true. Peaches set far more fruit than a tree can support without stress.

I also inherited a cherry tree and a peach tree a couple years ago. Freezer space is at a premium in my house, so this year I dried a bunch of the cherries and that worked really well! I also baked a lot of cherry pies (and froze some cherries in pie filling amount portions). I also put some in bourbon which makes a very tasty treat! I happen to like peach jam, so I just make a ton of jam and peach cobbler when my peaches are ripe.

Part of the problem is that neither of us eat sweets, so pies and jams/jellies will only be for gifts (but I don't really want to do any canning!)

I have a dehydrator and I think I'll dehydrate what I have and give to my neighbors to do what they want with them.

I'll also check into the homeless center and those type of places to provide fresh fruit when available. NT

I also rarely make or eat desserts or sweets. All three fruits you mention can be used in savoury dishes. Google will give you recipes. Here's an example. You could also make chutneys which are savoury and if you use a U.K. high acid recipe they do not need canning. (Don't use US recipes as they are designed to be canned.) Frozen unsweetened cooked cherries and peaches can be used to make fruit yoghurts using plain unsweetened yoghurt. And finally, quinces can be made into Membrillo which doesn't need canning and, although it is sweet, is eaten with cheese.