Mammy was a past mistress of
cutting "cups." That is to say, half-peaches, with only the seed deftly
removed. She sat with the biggest bread tray upon her well cushioned
knees, in the midst of the peelers, who as they peeled, dropped their
peaches into the tray.

When it over-ran with cups, somebody slimmer and suppler, took it away,
and spread the cut fruit, just touching, all over the hot kiln. It must
not be too hot--just so you couldn't bear the back of your hand to it
was about right. Daddy kept the temperature even, by thrusting into the
flues underneath it, long sticks of green wood, kindled well at the
flue-mouths. Cups shrank mightily in a little while--you could push of
an early trayful till it would no more than cover space the size of a
big dish, long before dinner time--in other words twelve o'clock--drying
was in full blast by seven. With fruit in gluts, and dropping fast, the
kiln was supplemented by scaffolds. Clean planks laid upon trestles, and
set in full sunshine, gave excellent accounts of themselves. This of
course if the sun shone steadily--in showery weather scaffold-drying was
no end of trouble. Weather permitting, it made--it still makes--the
finest and most flavorous dried fruit ever eaten.

The black people chose clear-seed peaches for their individual drying.
They made merry over splitting the fruit, and placing it, sitting out in
front of their cabins in the moonshine, or by torch-light. Washing was
all they gave the peach outsides--a little thing like a fuzzy rind their
palates did not object to. It was just as well, since clear-seed fruit,
peeled, shrinks unconscionably--to small scrawny knots, inclined to be
sticky--though it is but just to add, that in cooking, it comes back to
almost its original succulence. When the peach-cutting was done, there
was commonly a watermelon feast. Especially at Mammy's house--Daddy's
watermelons were famed throughout the county. He gave seed of them
sparingly, and if the truth must be told, rather grudgingly--but nobody
ever brought melons to quite his pitch of perfection. Possibly because
he planted for the most part, beside rotting stumps in the new ground,
where the earth had to be kept light and clean for tobacco, and where
the vines got somewhat of shade, and the roots fed fat upon the richness
of virgin soil.

It took eight bushels of ripe fruit, to make one of dry--this when the
peaches were big and fleshy. Small, seedy sorts demanded ten bushel