Cherry Season

So a couple of weeks ago it was cherry-harvest season around here.  We have two little sour cherry trees that are super mass producers!  They're only about 5 years old, and have been giving us mass amounts of cherries for about three years.

I love the little sour cherries that these trees produce!  I think the variety is called Montmorency.  

These cherries are perfect for baking, especially for cherry pies!  They're different from the dark red sweet cherries that come out in the grocery stores.  They're pretty tart, so they're really only good for baking, actually.  Although, I think each year they get a little less tart.  Either that, or I'm just getting used to them!

I especially love them because they're so so pretty!  They are so bright red.  When they're ready, I can see the red color bursting from the trees all the way from my kitchen.

As you can see, the birds really like these also!  We haven't found a way to keep the birds out of them yet!  If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Even with the cherries that the birds eat, we still get about 12 gallons of cherries every year, so I don't TOTALLY mind sharing with them.

This was our second picking!

I had some little helpers with me, but they actually just end up dropping half of what they pick!

They're cute though!

My family's favorite way to eat sour cherries is to make a cobbler from this mix.  The store is just down the road from us and it is so good with lots of different kinds of fruit, but the cherries are my favorite!

I thought I'd post some yummy cherry recipes on the blog soon!