More cherry picking!

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I have a wonderful fruit-picking partner-in-crime. Her blog name is Yarn Over. When she calls to say there are cherries for us to pick, I run.



You know you have found a wonderful friend-for-life when she picks you up with a cup of her spa-style gourmet coffee waiting for you, made just the way you like it!

We arrived at an undisclosed location to pick tart cherries. It was a great morning and we got more wonderful cherries!

We both have 3 children, all of whom are about the same age. Our oldest boys are definitely partners-in-crime as well. On this day they partnered at picking blackberries near the cherry tree and creating traps with lines of cherries (not sure what they were trying to catch in the trap, perhaps a dinosaur). Here they are running off together to create more little-boy havoc.



Our 3-year olds were being babysat by my hubby, which was great for us!

My 1-year old was also with hubby, but my friend's 1-year old came along for the ride. We discovered he also likes to eat tart cherries raw. Isn't he a beautiful baby? He reminds me of the Gerber baby.



I personally don't like heights, so I was not eager to climb the large ladders. Aloha Knitter, thankfully, had no such qualms.

The farmers at the undisclosed location let us borrow their cherry pitter! Never before in my life have I seen cherries pitted so quickly. I'm thinking of making an investment in one myself!



We have word that soon we will have apples for our picking! We are easy to please, we two partners-in-crime.... :-)









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Cherry Harvest

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Fresh Cherries! There are nothing like sour cherries. Many people pucker up at the thought of eating them plain, but I adore them straight off the tree (or straight from my freezer bag). My 3 year-old son definitely agrees with me on this one. We stood together in mid-June and ate every cherry (all 40 of them) off of our baby dwarf cherry tree.

I was desperate a couple of weeks ago, thinking I wouldn't be able to find any fresh, local cherries to freeze for winter.


My mother even bought me a bag of frozen cherries at a local butcher chop. But still, it's not quite the same...


Then my mother-in-law passed along wonderful news. There were 2 cherry trees ready for picking at a relative's house about 20 miles away.

It was great! We must have picked well over 30 pounds of cherries. The trees were loaded with the most beautiful, huge cherries I've ever seen.



We pit them by hand, then place straight into freezer bags with the juice. I use them in the winter for eating plain and making cherry cobbler. I'm not much of a pie baker, but these are pie cherries!




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