One of the most fun things we have been doing this Spring is trying to identify all of the different plants and trees that are already on our acre of land. Some of the first ones that became evident were our cherry trees! The white blossoms were beautiful as the weather turned warm (and then our second winter hit! Welcome to NC!), so we were very hopeful of getting a small crop. Ben was worried that the multitude of birds that live around here would get to them first, but I remained hopeful. Ben worked hard to clear as many vines out of the trees as he could without damaging the trees or berries (another post for another time). We watched as the berries started to grow and then ripen. Since neither of us have much experience with caring for cherry trees, we didn’t know what type of cherries we had. I thought we would need to wait till they got dark to pick them like most cherries you buy in the store. After looking at them, Ben’s sister, Sara, suggested that they looked like sour cherries, so they would not turn dark before being ripe. A few days later, Ben noticed some of the cherries were starting to fall off the tree, so he came in and announced that it was time to harvest them. We all grabbed baskets and rushed outside to pick cherries together.

Picking Cherries

Shadaiya, Gabriel’s fiancée, was hanging out with us, so she joined in the fun too. We were soon putting cherries in our baskets (and our mouths), but it became evident that we had a problem. No ladder. We were able to pull down several branches and pick more, but still more happily swung above our heads and taunted us. But we gathered a whole basket, which was more than we expected. Memorial Day was just around the corner and we were in the midst of preparing for our annual camping trip, so I put the cherries in the fridge and began to debate what to do with them. As soon as we got back from our trip, we dove into cherry prep. The first step was getting the pits out of them. I had never done that on a large scale, so I did a trusty Google search and found several different methods of doing it by hand.

Family Picking

I decided to try the paper clip method! I made a little video to show you how it works that you can watch here. Ben and I gathered our three middle children, gave each of them a paper clip, and dove into de-pitting cherries. The kids each did between 5-15 cherries and we did the rest. Of course we found some nice worms along the way and had some good discussion on them. Gross!!!! Anyway, when we were done, we had just over 4 cups of pit-less cherries. I only needed 4 to make a cherry crisp. We made that later in the afternoon and enjoyed it for desert after supper. We were not too impressed with the recipe, but the cherries tasted good and we were happy that our first crop from our land was a success!

Our Cherries