Cherry Picking

Now I know why they call the truck mounted units Cherry Pickers. We needed one today. We were picking cherries again and since we had picked the easy ones earlier, it was all ladder work. We never will get the top branches of yellow cherries and black cherries as the trees are over 10 meters tall. but in a couple days the red and yellow cherries will be ready to pick. We had pruned this tree in February so all the branches are easy to reach and loaded, as you can see.

We made 7 litres of cherry jam a week or so ago and canned about 10 litres as fruit. Tanya has a slick way of canning fruit that I had never seen before. Cherries are washed, put into a scalded jar, boiling syrup added and the lid smacked on. The jars are then triple wrapped in a wool blanket, upside down and left over night. The cherries are cooked by the time the jars cool.

Today we made Kompote which is essentially fruit juice. Sugar is minimum. Jars full of teh juice can be sealed or cooled and put in the fridge for immediate consumption. Sure tastes good on a hot day.