The Weekly Share

My Mother-in-law and I struck out at the pick-your-own cherry orchard at Cherry Hill Orchards yesterday.  All of the rain has caused many of the cherries to rot on the trees.  The cherries that were not rotten or split were either squishy or sour.    It was so sad to see all of those lovely fruits rotting away (OK – it was a little gross, too!).  The gentleman I spoke with at the weigh-in booth said that the harvest season is really only a few days long, so there is no chance of the crop “coming back.” There were still many unripe cherries on the trees, so I will head back out later this week to see if a few days of sunshine can help the last round of cherries.

I forgot to take my camera, but trust me, you do not want to see what a tree full of rotting cherries looks like.  It will make you cry!

We came home with less than a pound of cherries to split between us – here is my take:

So sad!

We’ve had great luck at Cherry Hill Orchards for all kinds of fruit: cherries, peaches, nectarines, apples.  The last 2 years have been great for cherries.  I think we brought home 19 pounds of cherries the 1st year we did it (note to self: that is A LOT of cherries!).  So this is not a good “cherry” year, but nectarines and peaches are right around the corner!  Yay!

Do you go to a PYO farm?  What do you pick?  What was your best crop ever?

I went to Myers Pick-Your-Own Strawberry Farm on Tuesday and came home with 4 quarts of beautiful red berries!  YUM!

4 quarts of strawberries from Myers PYO Berry Farm

The kids and I went there last week and picked 5 quarts of berries.  I’d blog about those berries…but they’re all gone!    Anyway, today I processed the berries.  I washed, hulled, and sorted them.  The nicest berries were dried, then placed on a waxed-paper covered cookie sheet.

Hulled strawberries ready for the freezer

They are currently in the freezer.  When they are partially frozen, I will vacuum-seal them into a bag with lots of extra “bag” on top so I can open the bag, take out what I need, then reseal the bag.  The rest of the strawberries were quartered and sprinkled with turbinado sugar.

Sliced strawberries with turbinado sugar

They are currently in the refrigerator waiting for me to decide what to do with them!  I will probably freeze some, maybe puree some – and I know we will EAT some!

Strawberry-picking season is just about over.  Mr. Myers said he’d only be open a few more days.  The season is only a few weeks long, from the end of May until mid-June.  Mr. Myers said that they had twice as many customers this year than in previous years.  He believes the increase is due to people wanting to save money any way they can these days.  You can spend a hour picking strawberries and pay $1.50 a quart for a product that is so much better than anything in the stores AND you know exactly where it came from, or you can go to a grocery store and pay $2.99 for a quart of  inferior, unripe strawberry imposters!  Pick-You-Own farms support local agriculture in the same way as CSA’s.  Small farms, local produce, better prices = improved economy!

For a pick-your-own farm near you, check out http://pickyourown.org

It was thin picking on Tuesday.  It took me over an hour to get 4 quarts.  But now we can have “fresh” strawberries for the rest of the year… or at least until we eat them all! 

What do you do with fresh strawberries?