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.