Ill-Timed Harvest (Bowls of Cherries)

The cherry trees are loaded. The cherry harvest is nearly over, in fact - the cherries are early this year, as is all the fruit. We have been picking cherries off the low-hanging branches of our three cherry trees for a week or so. Today, though, it suddenly occurred to my husband that if we didn't pick the cherries - NOW! TODAY! - they would fall on the ground and be wasted while we are in Oaxaca. 

Waste is a cardinal sin in his moral universe, so he marshaled the troops and drove the Case loader into the orchard. He lifted the girls in the loader up to the higher branches and told them to get picking. Within an hour, they had brought some twenty pounds of cherries into the house. These are Rainiers, beautiful yellow cherries with a pink blush. Rainier are the most highly prized local cherry, commanding a premium at the grocery store. Myself, I actually prefer the black cherries like Bings. I think they have a deeper, more intense flavor. 

No matter how much we enjoy them, however, it's unlikely we will be able to eat twenty pounds of fresh cherries by tomorrow night. I haven't got the time to try and process them. I don't even know how to process fresh cherries, other than by pitting them and submerging them in a jar of 100 proof vodka. So I think we will simply eat as many as we can and send the rest to the compost pile. 

When we planned this trip, I knew we would be missing strawberry season and raspberry season, but I assumed we would be home before the blueberry harvest and certainly before the would blackberries were ripe. Now I don't know - the blueberry U-pick farms are open already and the blackberries are already in the hard green stage. We may miss berry season entirely. 

All the more reason to gorge ourselves on cherries right now.