Canning clingstone peaches without sugar... Whew!

My husband and I went to Wal-mart several days ago.  When we walked in the door, I saw a LOT of peaches sitting there in crates, and the sign said 25 cents a pound.  My mouth dropped open, and I asked a nearby associate if they were really 25 cents a pound.  Yep.  She said they had gotten too many in so they marked the price way down to get rid of them.  :-0

So, what did I do?  I bought 100 pounds of peaches.  Yes.  I did.  They were not ripe, so it has taken until today before they were ripe enough and for me to have time to address the situation.  I literally laid awake in bed last night trying to figure out what to do.  See, these peaches are not "freestone."  Often, you can at least twist half of a peach off of the clingstone variety, but in this case, it wasn't working.  One half would just get squashed.  What to do... what to do..  I don't can with sugar anymore, and if you've been following me, you know I have a simple way to can freestone peaches with no sugar.  Look HERE, if you'd like to see that.

1.  How was I going to get enough peach juice to cover the peaches in the jars?

2  How was I going to remove the pits without mushing up the fruit?

After a bit of experimenting, here is what I settled on.  I need to mention that at first I was blanching the peaches for 2 minutes in boiling water, and then attempting to slip off the skins.  It worked with some of them, but the majority had to be peeled with a peeler, so I just went to doing that instead of blanching.  Your peaches might be more amenable to the blanching, so at least give it a try, for if it works, it will save time.

Aren't they beautiful?

 I had 6 boxes full like that. They were stashed in my sewing room, as it is cooler in there.

I used a regular vegetable peeler to take off the skins, then I used this nice  mango splitter to take out the pits.

 How to get enough juice?  I put all of the pit parts as well as the peelings into my steam juicer, plus a few cut up whole peaches so there would be enough.

Here is one, split:

Here it is all ready to steam juice:

 Oh, yes, my kitty stuck around to make sure I did it right. 

The little sticker labels had to come off, of course.

 Here are those scraps and cut up peaches after steam juicing,

 and here is some of the juice:

After taking out the pit parts, I cut them up and filled the jars, then covered the peaches with the peach juice!

 Then they went into the steam canner and were processed for 30 minutes after they got up to temperature.  Of course, a water bath canner will work fine.

 Here are some of them, completed and cooling.

I canned 27 quarts today.  It took all day, almost.  Next time, though, it will be much faster, as I'll already have the method figured out.  I hope this will help someone else with the same dilemma.  :)

Oh... I forgot to mention, when you get done with this project, you have to mop the sticky floor.  Really.

This post is linked to Traditional Tuesday #24
and to Simple Lives Thursday!