Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Cherry Picking 2013

So,
    We headed up to the Leona Valley to do some cherry picking again this year. The is a rather large fire that has been burning for 5 or 6 days now in the area so we weren't sure how well it would go but we forged ahead. On the way up we suddenly hit a traffic standstill and saw the people in front of us all turning around. We waited until we got to the roadblock and told the officer we wanted to go pick cherries. He said OK. so we went though and picked cherries. We were some of the only people up there which meant that all of the trees were still completely covered in big ripe sweet cherries. It also means the family owned farms were losing money like crazy so we loaded up our buckets as much as we could (whether intentionally or not).





As you can see the trees hadn't been picked at all so the kids could easily reach tons of cherries. I think this is mostly to blame for the overwhelming volume of cherries we ended up with.








We walked back down the hill to weigh and pay for our cherries and the woman behind the counter poured them all into one brown bag. When she had some difficulty lifting it then said that'll be $35 I thought huh??!? That means we picked 10lbs of cherries in about 45 minutes. We paid for them then had a feast on the side of the road. We brought home a ton, washed them pitted and froze a bunch of them, and we are still working on about 4 lbs of them in the fridge.

I found this video on the internet about how to get the pits out.



I thought well a paper clip is free and a cherry pitter is $12 I'll just do it the paper clip way. That was a terrible idea. After pitting about 5 lbs of cherries 2 days ago my thumb is still sore and my fingers are still dyed blood red.

Anywho, today is Z's 4th birthday so I'm taking pictures of that and there will be another post coming along soon I'm sure.

Till Next Time

RTSZA

4 comments:

Kristen said...

The internet makes things look so easy, doesn't it?

I can't imagine eating all those cherries. I feel bad for the farmers losing business!

C&C said...

Yum. I love cherries! but with that many you could end up in the bathroom for a while. how are they after being frozen?

Unknown said...

I LOVE sweet tree ripened cherries. They are natures candy. I'm so jealous.

SAM!!! said...

@Candice I don't know yet how the frozen cherries will turn out. I am still working on the fresh ones but If they aren't great I can always use them for pies/ smoothies etc and they were probably going to go to waste anyways. I'll let you know when I find out.