FALLING WATERS — The second annual Peach Festival was held at Kitchen’s Orchard & Farm Market, located at 1025 Kitchen Orchard Road in Falling Waters, on Saturday.
According to owner Carla Kitchen, this year’s festival was even more successful than it had been in its inaugural year, with 23 vendors and a variety of new peach products available to the public. Yet the festival very well might never have happened this year, if it had not been for her trusty Chevy Equinox, which helped one section of her peach grove survive the late frost in April.
“We were afraid that the frost, that we had earlier in the year, would prevent us from having any peaches this summer,” Kitchen said, mentioning they fought the frost by burning bales of straw and parking vehicles with their engines on, throughout her two orchard locations. “We were very fortunate, that they survived. It only feels right, to have the Peach Festival with our peaches — not somebody else’s peaches.”
The peaches that survived were large enough in number, to ensure the Peach Festival was able to solely feature the homegrown peaches, according to Kitchen’s Farm Market Manager Stephanie Harrison.
“While we have limited quantities of it, people have still shown up for us and supported us, like we didn’t think they would, since there was such a loss in the crop,” Harrison said, mentioning the only change customers might have felt, was that they were unable to buy whole bushel fulls of peaches. “All of our customers have been very understanding. They’re just thankful to have gotten some homegrown peaches, this year. Homegrown peaches always taste better, because they don’t have to be picked until they’re at their peak ripeness, when their flavor and sugar content have been able to fully form.”
To make this year’s festival more interesting, Harrison also created a new, specialty drink to offer the public — a peach slushy.
“People are grabbing them, before it even slushes up,” Harrison said of the slushy machine, mentioning the drink mixture featured two ingredients — peach juice and lemonade. “It’s something a little sweet and a little tart, to give everyone that little summer boost.”
Other peach-centric items they offered this year, included: peach pie, no-sugar-added peach jam, peach butter and hot pepper peach jam. Attendees could also go to some of the vendor booths, which offered products made with peaches from Kitchen’s Farm Market. At Backwoods Botanical & Provisions, herbalist Marlee Harrington was selling multiple items made with produce from the market, including: a peaches and cream tea, a peach ginger snap tea and a peaches and cream bath and foot soak.
“The peach stuff is going like crazy,” Harrington, who lives in Martinsburg, said. “Pretty much everything I create, I try to do through supporting other local businesses. Since I knew I was setting up for this event, I knew it was a good idea to include a variety of peach products.”
The same thought crossed the mind of D’s Delights Baked Goods owner Destiny Coles, who had expanded on what she baked for the festival the previous year, to include: peach scones, peach granola, peach focaccia, peach cheesecake and peach jam.
“I tried to do a whole peach theme with our products,” Coles said, after selling out of all her peach items within the first two hours of the event. “Because it is a Peach Festival, I knew it was important to lean heavily into all things peach. People are coming here with the desire, specifically, to taste peaches, and so I was determined to give it to them.”
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