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WFAEats
Welcome to WFAEats — a fun adventure where we explore all things tasty and interesting in the Charlotte food scene. We want to share stories, recipes and culinary escapades and hear about yours!

Peach-less In Carolina

Amy Rogers
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WFAEats
A hot dry summer didn't bode well for South Carolina peaches.

Unless you're a peach farmer, you may not have noticed that 2015 was a terrible year in the Carolinas. 

But that's what we discovered when we pulled up to Dori Sanders' place for our end-of-season expedition a few weeks ago. There were no peaches for sale at the Sanders' family farm stand in Filbert, S.C. The wooden plank shelves were all but empty. 

Up the hill, we could see the trees laden with rosy-gold fruit under a bright blue sky. What could explain such a scene?

Credit Amy Rogers / WFAEats
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WFAEats
Peaches on Dori Sanders' family farm were small this year because of high temperatures and low rainfall.

My friend and I scrambled up the dusty, dry road. And that's when we saw it: The peaches on those trees were tiny, like miniatures. Mostly ripened, some were as small as walnuts and none were bigger than a kiwi fruit. It was the result of too much heat and too little rain for weeks on end this past summer.

With Sanders' permission, we ate a few of the prettiest ones. They were as sweet and juicy as you'd ever dream a peach could be. But with nearly as much pit as fruit, they were completely unsaleable. 

And so we strode back down the hill to where Sanders had some pretty good-looking tomatoes for sale. 

For those not familiar with her story, Sanders became a published author in the 1990s while working with her siblings on her family's farm, one of the first belonging to African-American land-owners in the region. Her first novel, Clover, won the Lillian Smith Award "for Southern literature that enhances racial awareness." Dori Sanders' Country Cooking brought her to a national audience of readers who loved good food and good storytelling equally.

As a result, farm stand customers who must leave without peaches when they visit can buy books -- and still bring home something to savor. So that's what we did.

Up the road, some larger farm stands were selling normal-sized peaches. We knew they'd been trucked in from someplace else where the weather had been kinder. At one place, my friends bought a few peaches, so as not to disappoint the friends they'd promised one last delivery of summer fruit. 

For the life of me I don't think I could find that place again. There just wasn't anything memorable about it. No matter the weather, no matter the season, I'm happy to keep taking my chances with that little family farm -- the one down the road in Filbert. 

Amy Rogers is the author of Hungry for Home: Stories of Food from Across the Carolinas and Red Pepper Fudge and Blue Ribbon Biscuits. Her writing has also been featured in Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, the Oxford American, and the Charlotte Observer. She is founding publisher of the award-winning Novello Festival Press. She received a Creative Artist Fellowship from the Arts and Science Council, and was the first person to receive the award for non-fiction writing. Her reporting has also won multiple awards from the N.C. Working Press Association. She has been Writer in Residence at the Wildacres Center, and a program presenter at dozens of events, festivals, arts centers, schools, and other venues. Amy Rogers considers herself “Southern by choice,” and is a food and culture commentator for NPR station WFAE.