My Grandma Casey was an old timey Ozark farm wife. She had little formal education, but she knew about making do with next to nothing. She also knew her way around the kitchen. Like most poor farm women of her era, she knew all about preserving foods. She still dried apples apples in my time, but most of her foods were either canned in jars or frozen. I loved her fruit butters and canned peaches. We still enjoyed a lot of old time stuff, but she also had no trouble adapting to new ways of preserving them. She no longer dried peaches, that I remember, but we all loved the old time fried dried peach pies. Instead of cooking dried peaches, she would prepare this from fresh peaches and either can or freeze it for fried pies. Good stuff, too. She added no spices to it, so if you want to add cinnamon or a pinch of cloves, go right ahead.
1 gallon sliced over ripe peaches with peel
1 cup cider vinegar
4 cups sugar
Mix together and allow to sit overnight. Then simmer until cooked down very thick. Either use at once or freeze or can. Good stuff!
If you want spices, I would say 2 tsp high quality cinnamon, if you like cloves, add about 1/4 tsp or less. Cloves can easily overpower foods if you aren't careful.
