Cherry Picking

Hubby and I picked cherries today at a local u-pick orchard: Ray French Orchard  It was an incredibly beautiful day! Warm, but not broiling hot.  Love getting those first summer fruits!

These are called "Benton" cherries, and the trees were loaded!

We picked 50 pounds of cherries!  The inspector had to stick her nose in each bucket we brought home and make sure they met with her approval.

So, this weekend I will be dealing with cherries.  30+ pounds are going to be used to make wine.  Then, I'm going to make a couple of batches of cherry jelly.  I have a steam juicer that makes extracting the juice a piece of cake! After juicing for wine and jelly, I'll see how many are left before I decide what to do the rest.

Next week Ray French will have Bings, so we plan to go pick more cherries.  And I will probably spend next weekend canning. 

And speaking of canning, this will be my second year as a "Master Food Preserver".  It's a volunteer program through the local WSU (WA State University) extension.  Each year volunteers go though a 30 hour training program, and then commit to 50 hours conducting outreach education.  The class and getting out in the community is a lot of fun!

I plan to use my blog as part of the "outreach education" so, hopefully tomorrow, I will blog my cherry jelly making adventure!