Picking cherries with the grandkids

I have six grandkids –  four belong to the daughter who lives here in Orange, two to the daughter in Canberra (whom I seldom see, and about whom, therefore, there are no stories.) Of the local four, one is in his last year of high school and lives in Toowoomba with his father, and one is studying nursing at Uni in Ipswich, which leaves two here with their mum.

It isn’t very often that they are all together in one place. But last Christmas they were all staying with their Mum, and it was a pretty special event when I got a phone-call telling me that they were going to go and pick Cherries and would collect me on the way through. The orchard is only ten minutes from my place. Rather unfortunate, really, as the scenery is superb, distant hills, one mountain, trees, both native and European, and farm animals of various types, as well as fruit trees, of course..
We were given buckets to go round our necks, and told to start “there.”  The orchardist, name of Pat, laughed at our youngest, who is only six, but has to do everything the big kids do. Pat said the bucket was almost as big as  the little fellow was.

None of us had ever picked cherries before. The trees are quite young, and shaped so that they are easily picked from the ground. There are all these little stems all right close to each other, and very hard to sort out. So we ended up hooking our fingers between them and pulling the cherries off the end. It was very quick and efficient, but Pat was very concerned later because they don’t keep without stems. We told him they would be preserved by tea-time, and he was okay with that. It was a very enjoyable few minutes, each picking from a different tree, but close enough to talk to each other easily. It only took us 15 minutes to pick a box full, unfortunately, but we really didn’t want more than that. Then we all piled back into the car, dropped the kids off at my place, and  my daughter and I went to every shop in Orange  that sells such things, (all four) trying to buy a cherry pitter. We finally found two in the last shop we went to. It felt very strange, wandering around the shops in our work-clothes. If you have never dealt with cherries, it is a very fiddly and messy job to do with a knife, and the right tool for the job is really essential.
The youngest was very slow, and needed help to squeeze the handle of his pitter, but at least he had a go. He tired rapidly and wandered off to watch telly, which was probably a blessing. When the rest of the crew filled the first bowl, I laid claim to them and turned them into jam, teaching my sixteen-year-old older grandson how it was done in the process. He enjoys cooking, and is very keen on learning about preserving. He was absolutely stunned to learn that jam is 50% sugar, which he had never realized. The rest of the cherries went into Fowler’s jars and he got another preserving lesson. We only had one disaster – he got a bit carried away and dropped a jar into the preserving pot after the first batch was taken out. It promptly cracked, as the water was almost boiling. Another valuable lesson! Refill the pot with cold water between batches!
A great day was had by all, and we are all agreed that we should do it again next summer.

image: yokim01