Shopping at Motel 6

Every day Matt Hauser drives down to Santa Fe from Palisade, Colorado. He brings a truckload of produce picked that day from his farm. He sets up under white tents in the Motel 6 parking lot on the main business strip in town, Cerrillos Road.

His impromptu farm stand sells a variety of produce and some jams and breads, but it's the peaches -- the peaches -- that are famous citywide.

A few of the boxes of peaches at the fruit stand -- they'll all be gone by the end of the day

We shop at the farmer's market every week, both the main Saturday one at the railyard with hundreds of stalls and musicians and roasting chiles in the air, or at the small one a mile from us in the hospital parking lot on Tuesday afternoons.

Apples and peaches at both farmer's markets this year have been wonderful. It was a good season for tree fruit in northern New Mexico and Colorado.

But the Palisade farm peaches are in another category entirely. They are the definition of a perfect peach. It is recommended that you stand in the shower to eat one, they are that juicy. But not watery. Nice and firm and full of what can only be described as "essence of peach".

I brought home a few

In the two seasons we've been here, our neighbors and my book group and people at the botanical garden have all raved about the peaches at the stand on Cerrillos Road, but I never gave it much thought. The farmer's market fruit was fine, and I only eat a few, and shopping in the Motel 6 parking lot wasn't much of an attraction.

But now, having sampled my first peach from the Palisade farm -- oh my.

In an interview recently Hauser claimed it is the climate in Palisade that makes such great fruit. It gets to 106 in the daytime in summer which builds the sugars in the peaches, and then sinks to 60 degrees at night which sets the sugars. The little town near Grand Junction is famous for its orchards and vineyards so there must be something to his climate theory.

He sells produce in Durango too, on the way down to Santa Fe -- it's a seven hour trip each day.

Matt Hauser sorting peaches - a picture from the Santa Fe New Mexican

So now I head for the Motel 6 to go shopping for fruit. Peaches for breakfast and peaches for lunch and maybe one for snack too. I'm a fan.