Cherry Picking

This past Saturday, Mollie and I and the kids went to a local U-pick orchard.  It was their last weekend for the cherry harvest. At work a lot of people have been talking up a local variety of cherry called the "rainier cherry" presumably named after Mount Rainier. So when Mollie said she found a farm with this variety, I was really excited.  Cherries fit well with the U-pick philosophy. They are pretty expensive at the store, and most of that is probably because they are difficult to harvest and bruise easily.  Wikipedia (which cannot tell a lie) says these prize cherries go for $5 per pound.  Our U-pick price was a modest $1.50.  And they were worth every penny.  So amazing.  I am extra appreciative of the flavor and quality because a week ago I purchased some cherries at Walmart.  Half the bag was past ripe and rotting.  The other half just did not taste very good.  So after struggling to find half a dozen good ones, I just threw the rest of the bag away.  I was totally sour on cherries.

The rainier variety does not get the deep red color that bing cherries do when they are ripe. They are more like a Fuji apple color. So I was not sure how to judge what was ripe, but given that it was the last weekend of the harvest, I guessed that everything would be ripe, and well... I was right.  Out in the orchard, we found plentiful supply of delicious ripe cherries.  We picked a 5 gallon container in about 15 minutes.

 Since it was the end of the season, many of the trees were picked clean up to about 6 feet high.  So I put the kids on my shoulders to reach up and get the rest.

It was a great, fun quick summer outing.

 I plan to do a lot of U-pick this summer, we had great luck today, and in the past with both blackberries and peaches.  On a related note, I hope that they have good side-of-the-road corn stands; those are awesome.