CHERRIES

July is cherry season and although they are a couple of weeks late ripening, there are plenty of them for sale in different areas.  When we went to the Lower Mainland for the wedding, we stopped for a 2 pound basket of cherries at a fruit stand in Keremeos.  It happened to be an organic fruit stand and we ended up paying $10 for the basket.  The thing is, once you stop at a place and you are the only ones there, it’s hard to leave without buying something.  Anyway, the cherries tasted good and we enjoyed them.

When we got back home, we saw cherries for sale at our local farmer’s market and they were more reasonably priced at $3.00 a pound.  It was about the same price in the grocery store but we decided not to purchase any this time as we were headed to Creston in a few days.  My Dad has 6 cherry trees on his property and if the fruit was ripe enough, we planned to pick some to take home.  Who can resist free cherries?

Well, the cherries were close enough to being ripe and the crop was really good this year despite being late.  The orchardist next door estimated that there were about 800 pounds of cherries on each of the trees—too bad we couldn't sell them at $5.00 a pound like the Keremeos fruit stand!  We picked a box of Bing cherries to take home and ate the last of them yesterday.

The Creston Valley has more cherry orchards than the Okanagan Valley as most of the apple orchards have been converted to cherries.  The fruit is susceptible to damage if it rains prior to harvesting so the orchardists have to knock the rain water off the fruit or the cherries will split.  There are a couple of methods of doing that—towing a blower up and down the rows of trees, or using a helicopter to blow the water off the fruit and foliage.  We saw both in the neighbouring orchards and have some helicopter photos to share.