Cherries on Top!!!

 Mom and Daddy have a great orchard!  They have a number of varieties each of apples and cherries and both of those produce like a peach orchard in Georgia!  They even have a plum tree that produces!

This year has been odd in so many ways, but one of the ways is that the cherries outproduced the apples for the first time that I can remember!  

Duchess apple tree with blossoms in spring.

We were a zero apple farm again this year (lots of blossoms but no fruit this time).  We think it may be a fertilizer issue this time - but maybe not!  Could still be a bee problem, even with the mason bee house and the bee attracting plants!  See that post here.  We worked on them some more this year and will see if we can't improve next year again!  Our cherries did produce, and better than last year!  They do a little more each year, and this year since we were home on "lockdown" for most of the summer we were able to keep the critters out of them a little better! 

These are our cherries - this one is the Bali/Evans Cherry that is out front by the lake.  It has produced faithfully for the last three years - especially well since we wire wrapped it so the moose can't get to it!

Check out my post about Mad As a Momma Moose here to read more about that!

Here are the green cherries on the Bali/Evans.  Its so fun to see it and watch them grow and ripen!  We got two quarts of cherries this year - so we doubled production on the cherries!  It still wasn't as many as I wanted to have so I popped on over to Snowfire Gardens and picked to my hearts content!

These are the cherry trees at Mom and Dads!  Absolutely loaded with cherries!  These have already been picked twice also by other people - these are what is left!  These trees are Bali/Evans, Carmine Jewel, and Crimson Passion.  The Bali/Evans are the bigger cherry but not as sweet, the Carmine Jewel are smaller and sweet, and the Crimson Passion are medium on both size and sweet.

I recommend that you make a rule for yourself from the get go - never pick more cherries than you want to pit!  I got about three gallons and pitted them all.

I use a chopstick.  Mom uses a bobby pin to pit, and some of the Aunties use real cherry pitter thing-a-ma-bobs!  I have tried the cherry pitters (hand held) and found that they aren't my favorite way to pit - they kind of tear up the cherry and I like to pit above my bowl so I can save all the juice that drips off too and the pitters kind of splash it around.

Yum!  Winter delightfulness in a Ziplock bag!  This is a quart bag.  I was able to get 6 quart bags with 4 cups each from the cherries I brought home and made a deep dish cherry pie for a Sunday Supper with the kids with the rest.

I saved all the juice from the pitting process and canned it for use during winter also.  Cans up just like apple juice and you an actually do your cherry and apple in the same canner.  I have several recipes that take cherry juice, and we also use it when the Hubby has a gout attack.  It is really delicious mixed with the apple juice and has way, way less sugar than the store bought.

After I had picked my "all I want to pit" amount of cherries, Aunt Cyn  (far left) and Aunt Char (middle) showed up and picked with my mom (right).  Even with all the picking the trees still had an enormous amount of cherries on them!We all laughed when Aunt Cyn said she once went to a U-Pick farm in Washington and "accidently" picked 85 gallons of cherries in two hours!  She was in the zone! The farm owner offered her a job!  

So as you can see - we were a Cherries on top farm this year!  Better than nothing, and we will have both next year Im sure!

I hope that where ever you are, you can have beautiful days, cherries on top, and an apple if you want one!

Be well.  Blessed Be!