Skip to main content

Throwback Thursday: Picking Cherries


As I was freezing artichoke hearts yesterday (which is a bit tedious), my mind went back to memories of processing other produce.  Actually, the most clear memory for me isn't of the canning process, but of the harvesting.

It was a beautiful summer day, and my mom, my sister, my brother, and I drove to a U-Pick cherry farm.  The tree branches hung low, heavy-laden with perfectly ripe, sweet fruit.  We needed no ladders, and all of us picked and picked.  Before long, Mom said we could stop picking.  All of the containers we had brought were filled.  

I was going to take a photo of some cherries to illustrate this post, but cherries were $5.99 a pound and I just couldn't bring myself to buy any.  Why didn't I just take a photo in the store?  It honestly didn't dawn on me until right now.  So, you get to endure my "artwork."  (This is supposed to represent a bucket full of cherries, not a padlock with strange little hearts on top.)


We took the buckets up to the cashier.  We had weighed the empty containers on the way in, so now all that was left to do was to weigh the filled containers, subtract the weight of the buckets, and pay for the cherries.  Who knew that one adult and 3 children could pick one hundred pounds of cherries in such a short period of time?!  

I'm not sure why I don't really remember my mom canning all those cherries, but I know she did--without pitting them first.  (And really, who could blame her? It took long enough, I'm sure, to can 100 pounds of cherries, let alone try to pit all of them.) "Dessert" for the next year or so frequently meant a bowl of cherries, pits included.  I can still taste them, squishy-textured with a dangerously-hard pit in the middle.  Though I'm not a huge fan of canned cherries, the memory makes me smile.  I'll never forget Mom's sheepish grin when she brought home one hundred pounds of cherries! 

Have you ever been the recipient of an especially-large harvest?  What did you do?
photo visiting2_zps6d4521f3.jpg

photo ThankfulThought4_zps7d9599c2.jpg
Thanks for sunny days, cheerful helpers, and cherries!

photo signature3_zps16be6bca.jpg


Pin It

Comments

  1. ChristineMay 15, 2014 at 7:41 AM

    Hahaha! Looks like you and I went to the same drawing class. :) The story of your drawing is just as funny as your story of 100 pounds of cherries.

    Honestly, 100 pounds!?!? Craziness. I'm impressed that she canned them all, even with the pits.

    We had someone give us a bunch of blueberries upon returning from Michigan. Only 2 people in our family like blueberries, but lots of us like blueberry muffins. I spent a lot of time baking those things for the freezer.

    ReplyDelete
  2. NancyMay 15, 2014 at 8:11 AM

    My Mom canned a lot of things, but I don't remember any cherries. The plums she canned always had the pits in them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rozy LassMay 15, 2014 at 8:23 AM

    I remember canning cherries with my mom. They are the easiest to do, just wash them and pop them in the jar. I don't know why people expect them to be pitted. And the juice they produce is heavenly nectar! Canning whole plums is much the same. I just wish I could find free or very low cost fruit to can. All that grows around me is corn and soybeans. Got to get some trees planted in my yard soon! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. UnknownMay 15, 2014 at 11:29 AM

    If this comment shows up twice please delete one.

    What a great memory! Growing up in Michigan we often went to the berry farm to pick strawberries and at a nearby orchard you could pick apples, peaches and cherries. It is one of the things I miss about Michigan. My mother canned and froze all sorts of crops.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Conversations are so much nicer when more than one person does the talking. :-) Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts; I'd love to hear from you!

Popular posts from this blog

Ten Things of Thankful: Last Two Weeks

  Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park, as viewed from an overlook I apologize for not commenting on your blog posts this past week; John and I took a vacation to Yellowstone National Park, leaving behind our computers and, to a large extent, cell phone service. We escaped the outside world and just spent time in nature. Though we have friends near Yellowstone (who we love to visit) we made this trip just about us, so please forgive us if we were nearby and didn't stop by. The crowds were minimal (though we did mask up whenever we passed someone on the trails) and we spent our days hiking, taking photos, and watching geysers erupt. Today, we are back home and back to work, and, in the case of my computer, back to old shenanigans like not letting me import my photos. (I was able to add the above photo by using blogger on my phone, but that isn't my preferred method.) I want to write about Yellowstone and have photos I want to share, but will leave that for another...
10 comments
Read more

Ten Things of Thankful: Live from Oregon, part 2

stock photo of old computer monitor When I was 10 or 11, I remember sitting next to my dad in our living room and reading computer code to him as he entered it into an Apple computer. We would finish the exercise and he would hit enter (or was it "run"?) and wait expectantly for the green type to appear on the screen. If we were lucky, the whole conversation would occur. Most often, there would be an error either in my dictation of the code, or in the typing of the code. We would then go painstakingly back through the lines, character by character, to find and correct the error. After what seemed like hours (and might have been), we would succeed and the computer would finally run the entire program. It was magical! My dad designed and built an earth-sheltered, passive solar home decades before solar panels were commonplace. He also was on a 9-month waiting list for a Prius, when hybrids were not seen on every street.  While my dad is definitely on the cutting edge of technol...
5 comments
Read more

Monday Mentions: Equate Crutches

Have you ever needed crutches? I hadn't, until a week ago.  I'm pretty sure I strained a muscle while running a half-marathon.  (That sounds kind of cool, doesn't it? I'm not actually that cool; the last time I strained a muscle it was from carrying too many shopping bags at once.) In any case, I found myself in need of some crutches. I sent my husband to the store to get some. Photo: A pair of crutches leans against a wall  Not that crutches are all that complex, but because I hadn't used any before, I wondered if I could figure out how to adjust them to fit me properly. I shouldn't have worried. John came home from Walmart with their generic store brand of crutches, complete with instructions. First, I needed to take out a long bolt that went through the hand grip. Then I needed to find my height range, push down two metal pieces, and slide the crutches until the little metal pieces came up in the hole near my height range. (Having two people for this...
4 comments
Read more