The Upstate Peach Stands

South Carolina grows more peaches than the state whose license plates brag about them, a fact the upstate delivers with a straight face every summer, and the ridge country above Greenville is the crop's home ground, the orchards running along the thermal belt of the foothills, the packing sheds and roadside stands selling by the basket from May's early clings through September's final freestones, and the peach ice cream churning wherever two or more stands are gathered. The harvest towns of these pages take their Southern summer form here, and the season is long, sweet, and cheerfully competitive.

The stand culture is the attraction, family operations rooted for generations along the foothill highways north of the city, the day's picking stacked by variety with the week's best chalked on boards, the seconds sold for canning at prices that reward ambition, and the counters running the value-added canon, ice cream, fried pies, preserves, and the peach cider slushes that convert the skeptical children instantly. The u-pick mornings run at family pace in the cool hours, and the great festival in the neighboring ridge town crowns the crop each summer with parades and a peachy gravity the region takes seriously.

The peach run pairs with the city's own program per its pieces in these pages, the falls park and the main street handling the evenings, the mountain towns of the escarpment a short climb north for the afternoon, and the Saturday markets bringing the orchards downtown for the car-free. The peak, June through August, aligns with the region's long summer doctrine, mornings for the ladders, waterfalls for the heat.

Crawl three stands on one foothill morning, buy the basket of freestones and the quart of ice cream, and eat the first peach at the tailgate leaning forward, per the universal method. Can something once, which the seconds prices exist to encourage. The state to the south owns the peach's press, per the region's oldest joke, and the upstate owns the tonnage, sold daily at the roadside, which is the argument this magazine finds most persuasive, by the basket.