Two Days in Pictures…

Sunday Evening - remember I said I thought the next Cherry Tree would be ready soon… turned out it was ready right then.

So I called my sister that night and told her she needed to come out if she wanted any of these cherries… and so she did.

Monday morning - we started picking… see those red cherries in the picture below… those are from a different tree – they aren’t ready - yet.  Seems there are two trees planted together… or I guess it could be that the black cherry tree was grafted onto a different root stock and the root stock grew a tree as well.

 

I finally reached the top of my ladder…

I picked all I could reach and said that was enough!

Some of my pickings… everything got put in the refrigerator Monday because I was too tired after a morning of picking cherries and an afternoon spent working in the garden.

Tuesday Morning… Let’s see – first a trip to the store for more canning jars.  This is the book I worked from – a Mothers Day gift from my daughter last year.

This sounds good…

 

Wash and drain the berries…

Then I used this cherry pitter… one cherry at a time… 3 cups worth of cherries took me 1 1/2 hours.  Can you say tedious?

  

Then I decided to use this antique cherry pitter I had hanging in the kitchen.  I picked it up last year poking around antique shops.  You roll some cherries in the top… turn the handle…

The pits come out here…

 

and the cherry come out below…

 

Now tell me please why there isn’t a modern stainless steel version of this guy around?  I had 5 cups of cherries pitted and ready to use in 30 minutes.

 

Sure is a shame you can’t smell this… or better yet taste it!

I made 2 batches of the Black Forest Preserves… one per the recipe and one I used orange extract instead of the almond and added some cinnamon – yum!  Then I made a batch of Cherry Jam using the same recipe I used on Sunday when I canned the other cherries we picked.  A 4 cup batch of cherries for more jam and a 3 cup batch for more preserves are in the freezer… for some day when I have nothing better to do.

Not a bad day – 3 batches of jam/preserves canned… and a couple of tired feet.