Description

Our peach jam is made from peaches we grow ourselves, cooked in small batches with four ingredients and nothing else. Peaches, sugar, lemon juice, pectin. That is the entire label. No corn syrup, no preservatives, no artificial color, no flavor added to make up for fruit that was not ripe enough.

What Goes Into Every Jar

Northern Michigan is a hard place to grow peaches and a very good one when it works. The same Lake Michigan air that keeps our cherry blossoms safe from a late frost gives our peach trees a long, cool ripening stretch through late summer. The fruit hangs longer. The sugars build slowly. What you get is a peach that tastes like more than sweetness.

We pick at full ripeness, not at shipping ripeness, which is the difference nobody talks about. A peach picked hard so it can survive a truck to a distribution center never develops the flavor it was going to have. Ours travels from the orchard to the kitchen, so we can wait.

Small Batch Means Small Batch

Every jar of peach jam is cooked in a batch small enough to watch. That matters more than it sounds. Fruit varies week to week and tree to tree, so the pot gets adjusted rather than run to a fixed formula. Check the lot number on the side of the jar. That is a real batch, not a marketing flourish.

The result is a soft set, bright rather than syrupy, with real pieces of fruit. It spreads like jam, not like jelly.

How to Use It

The obvious answer is toast, and the obvious answer is correct. Beyond that:

On a cheese board. Peach jam next to a sharp cheddar or a soft goat cheese is one of the easiest wins in entertaining.

Glazing pork or chicken. Thin a few spoonfuls with vinegar or mustard and brush it over the last ten minutes of roasting.

Stirred into yogurt or oatmeal. Better than the fruit-on-the-bottom cups and roughly the same effort.

In thumbprint cookies and shortbread bars. The soft set behaves well in baking without running everywhere.

On a biscuit with salted butter. Do not overthink this one.

The 8 oz Jar

Eight ounces is the size that gets used. A half-pint fits in a gift box, tucks into a stocking, travels well in a cooler, and gets finished before it can languish in the back of a refrigerator. Buy a few and you have hostess gifts handled for the season.

Keep unopened jars in a cool, dark cupboard. Once opened, refrigerate and use within about three weeks.

About King Orchards

We have farmed in Antrim County since 1980, growing tart cherries, sweet cherries, apples, peaches, and other stone fruit on the hills above Lake Michigan near Central Lake. The fruit in this jar was grown a short drive from where it was cooked and jarred.