Our last real cherry picking happened
two years ago.
This year, we have a house with our own cherries to pick! I have to admit, I was
completely surprised to find this out, even though I knew in October that there
was a cherry tree here.
You see, our tree is an ornamental cherry. Well... half ornamental you might say.
Some time ago it sported from the original tree trunk and when Spring arrived,
our tree was weeping pink blossoms on bottom and showing off billowy white above.
My children were ecstatic! They were sure this meant fruit, and
I was wishing
I'd pruned the tree before it flowered. Alas, they marveled at this wonder with
complete faith that June would produce a cherry pie. I, on the other hand, doled
out pessimistic predictions that whatever came from the top of this tree wouldn't
be worth eating.
Every day for at least two weeks, someone brought in cherries for me to inspect.
From the time they were barely orange and still the size of a large pea, Zachary was
certain they were Bings (such optimism!).
Really, I just didn't think it likely an ornamental would be grafted onto a true eating
variety of root stock.
Well, as you might have already surmised, I was wrong.
That would be a good enough ending to this story, but it's not the end. Even edible
cherries when they have sported straight up, are not easy to pick and eat. Plus the sports
only equal half of a small-ish tree! No matter. For days the children were in its branches
and cleaned out every cherry they could barely reach.
Clayton one day picked 200 cherries (he counted them of course), used the
cherry pitter
which Great Grandma sent, made his Great
Great Grandmother's famous pie crust
all
on his own, and even crowned his 200 cherry pie with a lattice crust!
(That is the amazing pie and amazing grinning boy in the last photo of previous post.)
Once our own little tree had been cleaned out, we got permission to pick from someone
else's trees. The photos below are that outing - absolutely perfect from my perspective,
since I had 4 serious pickers, 3 dedicated to a good effort, 1 perfectly happy to eat cherries
from the bowls and buckets, and 1 content to sit in a stroller and watch.
That meant I could play with my camera and we still left with quite a lot of cherries!
The next day these kids spent the afternoon pitting and put up five gallons
to freeze. Wow! All on their own, and I'm excited to think of having cherry pie
at Thanksgiving this year :-)
Thank you Great Grandma~ Your Pitter was our inspiration this year!!
