In part to celebrate my birthday and in part because ’tis the season, the Unicyclist and I loaded ourselves into our happy little car this weekend and trekked out to Queen Creek to visit Schnepf Farms.

For $1.75 a pound, you can pick peaches—the earliest ones in the nation, unless I’m mistaken—and eat as many in the field as your stomach can hold, free.  If there is a benefit to triple-digit temperatures the first week of May, this is it.

We’ve been to Schnepf before.  Last year, we went during their peach festival, which was a bit hectic for us.  The peach trees had been picked over by the dusty, sweaty hordes milling around us, and every line in which we waited was excruciatingly slow beneath the scorching sun.  Going on a regular weekend, however, was enchanting. In a dusty, scorching, peach-juice-drenched sort of way.

Mark and Carrie Schnepf practice organic farming techniques, and it shows.  Pulling the gold and red-streaked peaches from the trees, you’ll spy lacewings, ladybug nymphs, spiders, and all sorts of creepy crawlies.  Last year, an assassin bug stowed away in our peach box, and I gave him a new home in our garden.  This year, we seem to have escaped stowaways, but we did see our fair share of polypedals on our fruity adventure.  I liked this spider.  She was very willing to pose, which I always find to be an endearing quality in fauna.

And below, you can see one of the beautiful peaches I plucked, sprinkled with bug pee.  Yes, I swear.  It seems I wasn’t the only one drawn to this beautiful peach.  This bright green true bug was awfully attached to it—literally.  Unfortunately, the sight of my ginormous face looming over her was more than she could handle, and she sort of sprung a leak once she got a good look at me.  (See the droplets?  Bug pee.  I swear.)

Many of the peaches were dead ripe, heavy and sweet and beyond chin-dripping.  I bit into more than one that sent a fountain of warm, sweet peach juice onto the Unicyclist, my cheek, and my shirt, despite the fact that I leaned well into the empty air over my feet before daring a taste.  It was a sticky, golden morning.  It was summer.

Now, we have two boxes full of Earligrande peaches downstairs perfuming the house.  When I got home today, the floral, fruity smell of the orchard was the first thing I noticed.  We’ll eat some of them, freeze some, and savor them all.  We’ve already given several away.  That’s how it should be.

The peaches are the first marker of the summer fruits: the apricots, warm weather apples, plums, and the melons.  I’m not usually eager for summer to come to the desert, but I’ll make an exception here.

What’s ripe and rich and ready in your corners of the world right now?