Our secret to great tasting canned fruit is starting with the best, ripest fruit we can find. We work with excellent Northwest orchard growers who pick their fruit at the peak of ripeness. When the fruit arrives at the cannery our work begins. While the canning process is slightly different for each variety of fruit we can, the basic process stays the same.

Here is what happens when we can peach halves:
First a bin of fruit is loaded onto the bin dumper where the operator keeps the flow of fruit from the bin onto the canning line gentle and even. The fruit is then hand-fed into a pitter that halves and pits the peaches. They travel along a conveyor belt where the pit cavity is inspected and flawed peaches are discarded. The peaches then pass under a steam hood that loosens the skin.

This is a process that we are proud of - most other canneries use a chemical to "burn" the skin off the fruit. The home canning process is similar when "blanching the fruit in a water bath." Once the skins are loose, they are rubbed by hand to remove the peel and then hand-packed into cans. The cans then pass under the syruper (a nozzle) which fills the cans with one of the variety of syrup blends; or, in the case of water pack, just hot water. They then travel into the exhaust box where gentle movement of the can releases air bubbles trapped between fruit pieces. This box is also heated and begins to warm the cans.

Upon exiting the exhaust box, the cans are sealed with a lid and then travel up to the ceiling where our overhead cooker processes the peaches and then cools them off. The finished cans roll out to our dock where they are put on pallets and transferred to the warehouse where they rest for a week at which point they are labeled and boxed.