Can She Make a Cherry Pie?

There are a few weeks when the travel & tournaments of softball overlap with the harvest at the Haven. We have officially REACHED those weeks!

At the end of June is when the cherry tree is "on", and we head out for picking. I was so glad that Todd got a new fruit picking-ladder for us. What is a fruit-picking ladder? Well, I'm sure there is probably some technical name for it, but it's basically a ladder with a tripod base, as opposed to being a straight or step-ladder. It looks like this:

They come in different heights, and when you have a good, tall tripod ladder, it makes a world of difference (you can tuck it into the branches for access to the upper tree levels). We've used an OLD, OLD wooden version, which came as a bonus with our previous house. Can you say rickety? Oh, yeah. The new aluminum one is steady, and has great treads, too. I love it.

Not all Haven cherry pickers use it. Cameron opted to climb the tree:

Which would be fine, but ever since Brandon slipped & fell in this SAME tree and scraped himself up pretty bad, I'm nervous about the kids up there. This is coming from the girl who spend most of her childhood summers up a tree in the backyard.

But if Cam hadn't been up the tree, he wouldn't have found this:

Yes, at the risk of sounding a little too obsessed with birds -- there was a nest in the tree.

These guys weren't quite ready to fly the coop, but it was coming soon. One didn't make it: he crashed at the foot of the tree. Um, permanently. The other flew off quite well a few days after this shot was taken.

We got quite a few cherries this year, which looked great, since we were able to spray the tree. Birds are not as big a competitor as bugs are. I made a cherry pie, and two batches of jam, before running out of time with other things in life. What? You haven't had cherry jam? That's because you almost NEVER see it in stores. But it's really, really good! We also gave cherries away, and could have given away even more, if those we offered them to had shown up to get them.

(Ice cream buckets make great picking buckets)

And Emma helped.

AND -- I was so excited to find a product I'd never used before, called Clear Jel. It's not available in regular stores, so I bought a package online from a company called KitchenKrafts.com. And, kudos to KitchenKrafts, because I ordered it on a Monday, and it arrived (Midwest to Northwest via regular shipping) on Friday. I love when a company is on the ball!!

Clear Jel is a modified corn starch. It looks and acts just like regular corn starch, except it is freezer and canning-stable. So it won't go watery on you. I LOVE this stuff!! I used it to can six quarts of cherry pie filling!! Next year, I'm getting even more, and can't wait to have pie filling on the shelves. (Have you SEEN the cost of commercially canned pie fillings???)

I've also got an idea that I want to try with cherry juice (shhh, I'm not telling!), but it will have to wait a year, because the cherry tree is done for 2010. Besides, it gives me something else to do with the juicer!

P.S. KitchenKrafts also sent a copy of their catalog with the Clear Jel, and now I'm drooling! What cool toys for playing in the kitchen!!!