Sour Cherry Season

One tree can produce a lot of cherries.

Only a month after moving into The Quad last year, the sour cherry tree in our yard was laden with bright red cherries ready to be harvested. Our main gardeners weren’t here. Susan was walking across the country and Kris and Kristen were out of town. That left Luisa, Raquel, and I to pick all the cherries and process them. We picked and picked and picked and eventually stopped because we got tired, leaving about half the cherries on the tree.

Still, we had so many cherries! Luisa and I sat on the deck and pitted them all by hand, which took about two hours and our fingers were pruned from all the cherry juice. We froze our harvest and enjoyed them for months and just used the last bag of frozen cherries this spring. I was initially daunted by the “sour” part of the cherry variety but they turned out to be absolutely delicious in scones and tarts.

This past weekend, the tree was ready for an initial harvest and we were all here to pick and process.

We learned a lot from last year and were better prepared:

• We brought out a real ladder in addition to the wobbly step stools we used last year.

• We bought cherry pitters so that we could pit the cherries without causing as much damage to them.

• We are armed with more ideas for how to use them, including boozy cherries for drinks. So, we had mason jars on hand for that.

There were the six of us, one of our adult children, and Kristen’s parents who were visiting, proving once again that many hands make light work. We were done with picking, pitting, washing, and bagging in just a couple of hours total.

Earlier that morning, I had made a simple syrup with bourbon and vanilla, so once the cherries were ready, I made three jars of boozy cherries. In addition to that, we put 20 cups of cherries in bags for the freezer. I’m guessing only about half the cherries on the tree were ripe and we picked almost of all of those. This morning, I noticed that all the remaining cherries are ripe, so we’ll be picking the rest tonight.

I honestly never imagined this aspect of The Quad Life. I did imagine shared meals and shared labor but I never pictured the laughter and joy of picking and pitting cherries with my friends on a hot and humid summer day. I would have never guessed that I would vibrate with joy upon seeing all those cherries tucked into the freezer for later use. I could not have predicted how much pleasure I would get from trying to figure out how to use what we grow. I mean…I made garlic scape salt this weekend with the last of our scapes. I doubt anyone saw that coming. More and more often, I find myself thinking, “What could we do with that?” when I look at our gardens and see an overabundance of something.

The news is horrifying and I continue to struggle to process everything that is happening in the U.S. and around the world. But I do know that there is something grounding and powerful about sharing the beauty of a freshly picked cherry with someone you love and something hopeful about putting something you’ve grown into the freezer to be enjoyed in the future—connection and a little bit of hope. Sometimes, it’s the simple things that help us keep going.

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Drop your favorite recipes that use sour cherries in the comments, so we aren’t forced to start adding cherries randomly to everything we make.

If I start writing about sour cherry pesto, you’ll know it’s time for an intervention.

Pictures from the cherry harvest…