It's peach time in Parker County.
"This year, the flavors are just better than normal to me," said Gary Hutton, co-owner of Hutton Fruit Farm. "The first ones I ate at the first of the season seemed like they were twice as good."
Hutton and other peach farmers will share their flavorful peaches on Saturday, July 14, at the annual Parker County Peach Festival in downtown Weatherford.
Favorable weather during the past winter and spring helped Hutton's crop bounce back from the pit of the 2012 record-breaking heat wave.
"When you have severe dryness like that, you have an infestation of grasshoppers and things. So they wiped out what few peach trees we had last year. This year it's a totally different story," said Hutton, 52, as he bit into another peach.
"We eat some every day," he smiled.
Sampling is the perk of a job Hutton's done for three decades after he, his brother and dad bought the peach farm. The next generation of Huttons is on, pardon the pun, pit row, too.
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Jay D. Hutton, 23, and Maegan Hutton, 21, work alongside their dad picking, sorting and selling what they grow.
"Yeah, there's family pride," said Maegan, as she talked about the people she meets every year at the Peach Festival.
"The ice cream they enjoy. The cobbler they eat. It all came down from our own orchard. Oh, that's really cool. That's something I can smile about," she said.
