Cherry Picking 2018

It's that time of year again! Of all the fruits we like to pick each year, cherries is our favorite!

Between the drive up, the ladders and the amazing views, what's not to love?!

This is definitely the one fruit when everyone want to get involved. The kids all love to eat the cherries as they pick, so if we only get one bucket, that means they picked at least two!

Even the littles take their turn climbing to the top of the trees to find the best ones!

Sometimes the ladders aren't in the right place, so our little monkeys get to climb.

The crop wasn't great this year, but we still managed to pick a full bucket. We still have a lot of them canned from last year, so these are just for eating fresh. I doubt they'll last very long!a

Cherry Picking 2017

Cherries are our hands-down favorite of the various pick-your-own fruits that we do each year. One big reason is the place that we go. We head up to Levering Orchard each year and the cherries, trees, and views are spectacular every time we go. The kids love climbing the ladders and it's great because as they are getting older, they're able to pick more on their own. Of course, Emma and Irene still ate far more than they picked, but that's to be expected. It didn't stop them from climbing the ladders, tho. :)

This was our 4th time going (we skipped last year for various reasons) and we picked about 28 lbs of cherries. Olivia then pitted them so that I could can most of them. Surprisingly, we still have canned cherries from our last visit in 2015, so this time, I froze about 10 lbs for smoothies and such.

Cherry Picking 2015

It's that time of year again! Probably our favorite of the Pick-Your-Ow season: Cherries. We went up to Levering Orchard for the fourth year running and got a decent haul of about 36 pounds of cherries. Each year, the kids get more and more helpful at it. This year, Gabe, Ezra and Olivia were fantastic helpers while Irene and Emma kept "watch" over our already-full buckets.

 The view is really something to see...

 The kids had a picnic lunch before they got started.

Quite the tasty haul. Hopefully, that will last us until next year! :)

Cherry Picking

I don't think we've made any secret of the fact that we love to do the pick-your-own stuff for just about every fruit we can. Last year, we discovered that cherries were a fun one to do and the location in the Virginia mountains was just about as pretty a place as you can find. We went back to Levering Orchard in Cana, VA again only to find that they had a tough spring and so their sweet cherry crop was only about 25% of what it should be. That made finding cherries a challenge. Last year, we were able to pick a large portion of our haul from the ground, but this year, it was all we could do to get 25 lbs, even climbing to the very tops of the ladders. We had to do quite a bit of moving the ladders to reach as many as we could.

Emma did a good job of finding the ones that we accidentally dropped. They didn't make it to the bucket, but she found them.

 

 Ezra has no fear and immediately climbed to the top of the highest ladder 20+ feet off the ground.

Gabe really got into it, too.

 

At one point, Olivia forewent the ladder altogether and parked herself amongst a particularly plentiful group of branches. Notice she didn't have a bucket... oh well, I guess eating them is part of the fun.

 

It was a particularly beautiful day.

 

 

While there weren't many, there were enough for us.

 

 

Even with all they ate in the trees, they still wanted their picnic lunch before we left.

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Cherry Picking

We first heard about going cherry picking from friends of our last year, but the season is so short, we didn't make it in time. This year, however, we kept a close eye on the calendar and the websites to make sure we were there. It was our first time doing it and we all had a blast. We went to Levering Orchard in Ararat, Virginia because they were the first one to start picking this season. They have 32 acres of trees and 44 varieties of cherries! They put ladders out in all the trees that are ripe so you know which ones to pick from. 

The kids were so excited to get to climb the ladders.

Ezra decided the best place to find cherries was in the bucket. 

Olivia was so brave and scrambled right up the ladders, reaching some beautiful cherries.

 

There were plenty to pick, even from the ground.

Ezra finally had his fill and wanted to try his hand at climbing.

Even Mommy got into the act.

Our bountiful harvest of 10 lbs! 

Then came the pitting. We bought a great pitter from Sur La Table and set Olivia to work. It took a while, but when we were done, we canned enough cherries to have them all through this year until the season comes around again next June.