Lots of Sourness

 

I guess because I enjoy sour cherries so much, I have kept track of my harvest progress since I planted my first tree 25 years ago. I planted it in our back yard which had too much shade but was the only place on my quarter acre that it could go. It grew slowly and produced a handful of cherries for a couple years and then we sold that house and moved. I still wonder if that sour cherry tree is there, a lot taller and producing buckets of sour cherries for the current occupants.

The place we moved to has 3 acres and so I wasted no time in planting another sour cherry tree. I'm not sure if it is the location or something else, but it was and still is extremely slow growing. In fact, its slowness towards life frustrated me that I eventually bought and planted a second sour cherry tree and then a third. The conditions for the second sour cherry tree evidently were the best for it has grown at a tremendous pace and is already 4 times the size of the first one.

Nearly every year the harvest sizes slowly got bigger though were interrupted a few years by late frosts that killed all the blossoms so there were no cherries. Last year, our best year ever at that point, we finally crossed the first hurdle and harvested enough for an entire sour cherry pie. I was a very happy man. My wife had made a few sour cherry tartes over the year but having enough for a pie, traditionally made for me on Father's Day, was something I looked forward too. I finally could see a future with more than one sour cherry pie a year in it.

This year, we had a beautiful spring and no late frosts to kill the fruit crop. The first and third cherry trees had several handfuls of cherries each on them but the second one was absolutely loaded. In an attempt to keep ahead of the birds, who love sour cherries too, I have picked it twice. The first time I picked enough for a pie. The second picking you can see in the picture above and produced several gallons that will probably make another four or five pies in the future. There are still a lot of cherries left and I hope to pick them after finishing up this post and perhaps secure another pie or two for this upcoming year. I may end up with so many sour cherries that I'll make a pie to give to someone else, something that has been unthinkable in my life for the last 25 years!

My Father's Day Sour Cherry Pie

If you think I'm a bit crazy for my love of sour cherries, I came by it naturally. We always had sour cherry trees on the old farm and my grandfather's farm where we would move to after he died. We would pick cherries by the 2-1/2 gallon ice cream bucket full and turn them into many pies, jellies and juices for the upcoming year. 

One other note, my wife doesn't like sour desserts like the above pictured pie. So I only have to fight my two girls, who both think it is the best thing ever, for a slice or two.