Cherry pickin time!

One day last week we decided that it was time to pick, pit, and bag cherries.  Believe you me, I have a love-hate relationship with cherries.  Cherry pie is my favorite pie and is the favorite choice of my entire family.   Our cherry trees yield Montmorency cherries which are a tart cherry that when you take that first bite you pucker and roll your eyes at the same time!  This is the obvious love part!

Montmorency cherry tree

Cherries

We have two dwarf trees that are not so dwarf anymore and produce an abundance of cherries. Our best year was in 2010 and we put away 40 quarts of cherries and still had some left to offer to friends.  This is usually an all day event, picking then pitting and finally bagging them in freezer bags to be used throughout the year.  Such a sticky mess!  You guessed it...this is the hate part!

Every time we pick, I am reminded of my late great-grandma Frankie.  She was a farmer's wife and her family was her pride and joy and a close second was her garden and it's bounty! I grew up in the country in northwest Missouri and we always had a very large garden and Grandma Frankie and I would have friendly competitions in gardening to see which one of us could harvest radishes, tomatoes, onions, green beans, peas, and the like first.  I fondly remember when it was time to pick cherries or strawberries, she would look forward to helping us out and was always in awe of the beauty of God's creation and blessing us with such wonderful food out our back door and only a few steps away ready to be plucked by our fingers.  She definitely brought enthusiasm to gardening and a joy to life itself by living a simple life and honoring God in all that she did!  I need to remember that cherry pickin IS a beautiful blessing!

Ranae