Peach Season!
The heft of the fruit in my hand heralds the arrival of a highly-anticipated annual event: the intensely sweet juiciness that comes from a Palisade peach. With my serrated knife, I cut into the firm skin and quarter the peach all the way around from the top, then around its equator.
What a delight when the peach twists off its pit into eight gorgeous pieces with almost no effort! Of anything, for me, it’s that rubic-cube-like rotation and the way it unlocks the colorful and just-right flesh on the interior that is so delightful. Not the least mushy or pulpy, each piece drops into the bowl as an intact gustatory promise.
Ah, the Colorado peach season! Every August when the peaches came in, my much-loved step-father, Tim, waxed poetic about them in his weekly letter to the family. It was a pilgrimage for him and my mom to go to the Minturn Farmer’s Market on Saturdays and stock up on those peaches. We heard about their deliciousness for weeks.
“The Rise of Peach Season” by Maggie Malloy (for the 2025 Palisade Peach Festival)
I get it. These peaches really are special. They are grown in the western Colorado farming area of Palisade, just east of Grand Junction. The Palisade area is located in the Grand Valley at an altitude of about 4,800 feet. The valley enjoys a microclimate with warm days and cool nights moderated by famous winds that blow through Debec Canyon, a 15-mile chute along the Colorado River that helps protect the orchards from frost. The net effect are peaches that boast sweetness and juiciness that can only be described as extraordinary.
Not surprisingly, Palisade celebrates its famous fruit! For 57 years, there has been an annual Peach Festival in August boasting everything peachy, including the peach-pancake breakfast, a peach eating contest and other races, a peach cuisine throwdown, and live music on the Peach Jam Stage. (See https://palisadecoc.com/events/palisadepeachfest/)
Peach season is also a brilliant opportunity to remember some life essentials, the way I see it. The simple act of biting into a perfect peach inspires the (very legitimate) emotion of joy, which seems helpful when a present and growing sense of dark times is arising for many people. To be in Colorado when this exceptional fruit is abundant is also a beautiful reminder of the relevance of living in the present moment. They only last a few weeks, and then (to Tim’s annual dismay), they are gone for another year. Eat this peach! Enjoy it now!
Then there is gratitude. What’s not to be thankful for, if not being the recipient of a Palisade peach? It is no small thing. A daily gratitude practice is easy during peach season. And because Tim and peaches are so entwined for me, what a nice reminder, too, of his love for me. He always made me feel special.
This week, in mid-August, some dear lifelong friends arrived to visit me in Colorado for a couple of days. With them was (be still my heart!) a box of ripe Palisade peaches. It has been some years since I was in Colorado for peach season, and, well, what a wonderful gift!
