cherry picking mmm

Nothing like eating sweet tree ripened fruit. Today is is cherry picking time at the property of our good friends Jean and Pieter Bakker. Jean is in the third photo down. For those of you who don't live in fruit growing country, these three legged ladders are built to put the third leg in towards the tree to get close-up with the fruit. This old tree grows near a little stream and produces great fruit every year. The time to pick is crucial. Some
of the cherries we picked were split. That is fine and does not affect the fruit until a day or two later when the split starts to spoil. All the cherries today are new splits and OK. The cherry splits because it soaks up the moisture from the rain and can't contain itself when the sun hits it. [Some commercial cherry growers are growing a later variety when we are less likely to have showers. Some roll a cover over their small trees to keep the moisture off. While others hire a helicopter to blow the rain off the cherry.]
We are indebted to our friends for letting us pick their cherries today, and later on their apricots, peaches, raspberries and plums. These are the people we meet with most Monday evenings for Family Home Evening which for us consists of dinner, and reading the scriptures and a lesson manual and prayer.
We picked 13 ice-cream buckets in two hours. That does not include the cherries I had to sample to make sure they tasted as good as they looked. The darker the cherry the sweeter it is. Dropped some off at friends.




Carroll sorted them. We pitted them with a little hand pitter. Faster than cutting them open with a knife. The plunger pushes the seed out the end. No lost juice. Frozen, they make great drinks and milk shakes, or eaten out of the freezer on a hot day. We like these better than the way we used to preserve them, bottled or dried.



 Some of you will be here soon to enjoy with us.  mmm.
















Carroll enjoys her raised box gardens.  Here she has picked nearly all the peas.  They are so good right out of the shell.  The cool wet weather has been ideal for the peas.  The vines have not dried up like they normally would have in the hot July sun.  She has frozen some of them too.

Thought for the day.  All good things come from Heavenly Father.  These good fruits and vegetables are certainly His creations.  We are grateful for His bounties.