Monday, July 8, 2013

Cherries

Inbetween swimming lessons, cleaning, family reunions, and extra sewing, we picked cherries!  I took the children to a pick-your-own orchard.  Ben asked what the treat was going to be and I told him picking cherries was the treat. He dropped the subject.



And actually, the kids had a ball.  There were long rows of trees in the morning sunshine, buckets in our hands, and ladders to move from tree to tree.  The trees were loaded and it felt so luxurious and wonderful to have so much bounty at our fingertips.  My gardening efforts yield handfuls, not bucketfuls.



the children took turns using the pitter and their fingers to pit cherries; I used a paper clip

We picked 3 pounds of sweet cherries for $2.75 a pound and 12 pounds of sour cherries for $2.25 a pound.  We sat on the porch and pitted the cherries (I did end up pitting the rest by myself - the silence was fine with me). I made a cobbler in the slow cooker, we ate the sweets, and the rest of the sour cherries went in the freezer. 


This was the second preserving project of the season. The first was strawberry jam and went entirely undocumented by camera or blogging.  The third was recently completed - stay tuned because I have a new, useful canning set-up to reveal!

6 comments:

Hazel said...

I love cherries- I can't decide whether I look forward to them more than strawberries in the summer. Ours are very late this year, but I've just checked the local PYO orchard and they should start on Friday!
I have a fan trained Morello cherry on the north side of the children's play house which produced the grand total of 3 cherries last year, but is looking much more promising again this season. They made a delicious pie 2 years ago.

Julian said...

How fun! We enjoy going to a farmers market to pick strawberries every summer. This year I made jam.
Christina

Zoë said...

I clicked through to your cherry pitting post and noticed you use a paper clip. I do too but I attach it to a popsicle stick and it's much easier to hold! I bend it out so the two "loops" form a 90 degree angle and then the larger loop I attach to the stick with duct tape. Works like a charm :)

jenny_o said...

Sweet cherries: one of my most favourite foods ever. I should find a way to pit them before eating, though. It has never occurred to me, as I don't bake with them; I just eat them raw. (No one else in my family likes them, for some reason.) I rely on the extremely-careful-chewing method followed by discreet removal of the pit from my mouth. Not that I have to be too discreet, seeing as no one else is around when I eat them (see above).

Sew Blessed Maw [Judy] said...

Such a fun day, and a yummy cherry cobbler for all the work.. Kenny came home with fresh peaches from his deer cabin.. So, we had peach cobbler today.yummy!!!
Look forward to seeing what new reveals you have for us..

BLD in MT said...

Filling buckets IS fun! We are more often in the handful category ourselves. We know of several sour cherry trees in our area and have been picking once already. We have a second outing planned for this evening. I am still looking for a sweet cherry tree though....