Peach Truck Tour stops in Lansing July 29

Peach Truck Tour

Sunday, July 29

2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Lansing’s Tractor Supply Co.

510 N. Marketplace Blvd.

Price of peaches vary

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Pull out those cobbler recipes and brace for things to get peachy. Take an opportunity to taste a fresh peach driven straight to Michigan from a fifth generation Georgia peach farm.

Featured by the Today Show in early July, the Peach Truck Tour mission is simple: Load up a truck and deliver farm fresh peaches as soon as possible to places that don’t have access to them.

The problem of fresh peach access became apparent to the Peach Truck Tour founder Stephen Rose after he moved from Georgia to Nashville.

“I did a corporate sales job and I was happy doing that. One day I had this yearning for a peach — I grew up in this little town that had them. I couldn’t find a good peach; I couldn't believe it,” said Rose.

In 2012, he traded his 1995 Thunderbird for a 1964 Jeep Gladiator truck and began bringing peaches from Georgia to Nashville.

It was a hit.

“We have bigger trucks now, but when we started it was just like me and my wife in the Gladiator,” said Rose.

Store bought peaches don’t compare to a fresh Georgia peach, said Rose. “They are extremely sensitive to their environment. If you leave them in a refrigerator, it tastes like a refrigerator,” said Rose.

Customers will notice the difference immediately, said Rose. “They are picked when they are tree ripe, not to have shelf life. They are tasting what it would be like if they picked the peach themselves.”

Stopping in Michigan is more than just another installment of the tour, said Rose. “My mom’s whole side is from Western Michigan. My grandma grew up in Lawton and Michigan summers were a thing of my childhood.”

Reception and turnout has been great so far, said Rose. “I love Michigan.”

Part of what makes fresh peaches tough to get is the intense labor and conditions required to grow them.

“It is extremely difficult and a hard day at work,” said Rose. “Nothing has been mechanized. You prune and pick every tree by hand. With so many other crops, machines do all the work. With peaches, every individual peach and tree is dealt with by hand.”