Cherries!

One quart of cherries from just one bush - we have 9 bushes.

Nanking bush pie cherries ready to pick.

Some people spend their Friday evenings in funny ways, but we spent ours picking home-grown sour cherries.  Just one year ago we received these bare-root sticks in the mail no taller than ten inches, but after a year of growth and a Spring of beautiful white blooms, we are being treated to cherries - the kind that taste like Life Saver cherry.  Though many of them turned red last week, after careful taste-testing and plenty of squirt tests, we determined that our first bush is ripe for the picking.  And that's what we did - the whole family was involved.  We gathered about one quart, and this is just the first out of nine bushes like it; the others still need more time to ripen.

We have helpers; the whole family was involved!

These are sour cherries, the kind that work best for pies and preserves; as opposed to sweet cherries, the kind that are good for fresh eating.  We are all fans of cherry pie, so that was the consensus for our first harvest.  The pits seem to be of a cling-free sort and pop out when the fruit is squeezed--as does a bunch of juice.  It didn't take too long to pit all of them, to mix with sugar, tapioca, and a dash of almond extract, and to fold under a pie crust. 

The result?  Homemade cherry pie, no pesticides, herbicides, or chemical fertilizers.  Just home-grown goodness from the bush to our plates in a little over an hour.  If you are wondering about the variety, these are Nanking Bush Cherries, sold here:  http://gurneys.com/nanking-bush-pie-cherry-tree/p/08502/.  Product description - Early and extra productive! Produces sweetly scented spring flowers and tremendous crops of tasty fruit. Bears up to 8 qts. of bright red cherries; ripens in June. Grows 6-8 ft. high; looks good in a hurry. For best yield, plant two or more. Zones 2-8

Mixed with sugar, tapioca, and folded in a crust.

The finished product!