As the days lengthen between spring and summer, a familiar scent fills the air, luring people to orchards and farm stands to buy baskets of peaches for pies, scones and more peach recipes, because in the South, peach season is as sacred as a holiday. I remember my first peach, the intense sweetness and slightly floral notes, the juice running down my chin—it tasted like summer.

Stephen Rose grew up eating fresh summer peaches straight from the orchard, but when he and his wife Jessica moved to Nashville, they couldn’t find those perfectly ripe, ready-to-bite peaches picked fresh off the tree anywhere. In 2012, they decided to change that.

They drove to Stephen’s home farm in Peach County, Georgia, loaded their 1964 Jeep Gladiator with hand-picked peaches and brought them to Nashville. The Peach Truck, a neighborhood ice cream truck without the jingle, was born.

“The first truckload sold out immediately and the rest is history,” Jessica says. Although business has grown since the first summer shipment, Jessica says they still “hand-pick the finest peaches grown by top-notch, trusted farmers in Peach County and deliver them to you within days of hanging so you get the tastiest peach you’ve ever tasted.”

The Roses harvest 40 varieties of peaches each season to fill their truck, then deliver the best fruit from each harvest, with each variety having its own unique flavor and texture. The selection varies throughout the season, but their standard of delivering only the best quality remains consistent. “We carefully hand-pick and inspect all of our peaches and, with our world-class team, ensure they arrive to you within days of harvest. After all, the best variety of peach is the freshest you can get,” says Jessica.

From mid-May to early September, the Peach Truck offers home delivery of hand-picked peaches and local pickup, and the Roses take the show on the road. They load up their vehicle — which is a bit larger than the original truck — and drive to 15 states across the U.S., including my home state of Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. You can find out if the Peach Truck is coming to your area by visiting the website and entering your zip code.

If The Peach Truck has a pickup service near you, you can order as many 12-pound boxes as you like and meet the truck at one of over 900 scheduled stops. If there is no stop near you, the company will directly deliver smaller boxes of 13 fresh peaches that are picked and packaged on the day of shipment.

Once you’ve secured those peak-of-season peaches, it’s time to plan how you’ll enjoy them. Pies, chips, and cobblers are classics. Galettes, ice cream, and pickled concoctions offer some variety. You can grill them, toss them in a salad, and make countless sauces and marinades for your summer barbecues and get-togethers. But nothing beats the taste of a fresh, hand-picked peach eaten in mid-summer, when the sun is shining, the scent of freshly cut grass is in the air, and the days are longer for watching fireflies and sunsets like cotton candy on the beach.

If you’re looking for inspiration on what to do with your peaches besides gobbling them up, the Roses have written a cookbook inspired by their love of the summer stone fruit. The Peach Truck Cookbook which includes details on peach varieties, best harvesting methods, and instructions for starting a peach pantry. It’s packed with orchard-fresh recipes from some of Nashville’s most famous chefs like Sean Brock and Tandy Wilson. As you browse, you’ll find classics like sticky peach pecan rolls, peach jalapeño cornbread, and classic peach pie.

“What we love most about this business is the opportunity to bring joy to our customers and reach out to them through something as simple and beautiful as a peach,” says Jessica. “There’s a little piece of summer in every peach and we appreciate being able to share that with our customers and their families year after year.”