Cherry Harvest!



As promised our cherries came in hugely this year.  Oh, did they ever.  It is fair to say we are awash in them.  Virtually all of the cherries featured in previous posts ripened (nearly at the same time) and without much attrition from birds and bugs.  So we have been picking and pitting wildly.  Despite the tedium of processing the fruit, it is great to see our trees so healthy and productive.

Just look at them all

That is the definition of laden

We have two varieties of cherries.  We are not too good with names, but as you can see, some are smaller and more suited for cooking while others are large and better for munching on.  The smaller variety is extremely prolific with multiple cherries hanging off one "node." (See above).  The other trees have just one or two cherries growing every few feet of branch length.  The amount of each that we are harvesting is therefore very disproportionate.

The differences in color and size are interesting.

The process of picking is tedious but fruitful (pun).  By our guess we will have to pick the amount pictured below 50-100 times or more in order to have picked most of the cherries. There are just so many. 

One trip out to the trees

Washed and awaiting processing



We have decided to process the cherries two ways (other than snacking on them raw).  Cherries don't keep extremely well;  they can oxidize and bruise relatively easily, so we decided to pit and freeze some and pit and dry others.  The frozen cherries will be good for pies and putting in to smoothies while the "raisins" will be good for snacks and for putting in to breads. 

Easily the most labor-intensive part of processing is pitting.  A pitter is a the way to do it but you still end up with sticky juice all over yourself and the surrounding area.

So many more to do. The pitted cherries on the tray are headed to the freezer.

For drying, we are fortunate that our oven has a drying feature that uses the convection fan and low heat (140 degrees) to dry the fruit over the course of 19-24 hours.  If your oven doesn't have this feature you can DIY it by setting the temp on low, propping the door open a small amount, and directing a fan in to the oven to move the warm air over the fruit.  Higher heat can be a double edged sword.  It can dry faster of course but the fruit must be monitored closely;  we have made little cherry cinders already by using too high heat for too long. 

The size of the cherry makes a big difference in drying time. 
You must check them periodically and take out those already done.



The result:  they look funny in pictures but are tasty

Even though we have turned into a cherry factory for now (and for the next week or more), our garden is doing well too.  This week we harvested our first leafy greens:  Swiss Chard and spinach.  In a few days the lettuce will be ready for a first picking too. 

 

Not red but green for once.

We'll let you know if we make it through cherry season!  Hopefully the apple harvest this fall will be as productive. Stay tuned.  

A Chick is Born and Other News

Amount a month ago one of our hens went broody and started sitting full-time on a clutch of four eggs. Since we are having trouble with our rooster (he's a jerk to the hens and is damaging their backs) we thought this would be our chance to see how the chick raising process goes.  So we let her sit on the eggs.  The incubation period is about 21 days, thus we were curious what the hen would do with herself for food and water. At first she basically sat on the eggs without interruption for two weeks.  When we'd go collect eggs from the other hens we'd tap on her back to make sure she was still alive.  Sure enough she'd raise her feathers and squawk a bit.  After the first two weeks she did venture out of the coop to get some food and water on occasion, but after a few days she went back to sitting uninterrupted.

Pretty much right on time we looked in and saw this:

Little yellow face

A little chick had appeared! At this point we were not sure that the rooster or the other hens would be safe for the chick, so we closed up the hen and chick in the coop for a few days so the little thing could grow a bit. The other chickens roosted on top of the coop at night and the hens laid eggs around the property-not ideal but we didn't have another option.  We also waited to see if the other eggs would hatch.  They didn't in the end, which is probably pretty normal.

After a few days we had to move the hen and the chick out of the coop so the other chickens could return home.  At first we tried a cat carrier but that was too small.  Eventually we put the two of them in to a large feeding trough with food & water.  We had to keep the trough covered to keep the cats from being too interested.  (Ironically this is the same trough we use to take chickens to the slaughterhouse).  After about a week the chick is doing well. 

Running around on his little orange legs.

 
The rest of the farm is doing pretty well.  The fruit is doing great.  We've had a bumper crop of strawberries and our trees are doing great.  The cherries in particular are going great guns.

With the large image hopefully you can see all the cherries. 

 With the trees we are trying a system of sticky balls hanging from limbs to catch bugs.  Since we had no fruit last year,  we will have to see how they work this year.

It's not a mega cherry, or a candy apple, but a bug trap.

The garden has been a mixed bag so far this year;  though it is early yet. On the good side the potatoes are coming in well and the Swiss chard is growing strong.  Some of the other plantings are a bit slow.  But we have hope there is much more to come!

Spotty growth in parts.  Lettuce and some spinach making an effort.

Potatoes doing pretty well

The Swiss chard is happy