Cherries Revisted

Last we we had a serious cherry-fest. There are no other words. Three days last week were spent picking and pitting and jamming and canning. It was quite the production. I really can't take that much credit for all of it David's mother was the driving force behind all of our cherry-ness. By the end of the week I will say that we were definitely seeing red!

Once we got a few good buckets full of cherries we took them back to my mil's house and rinsed them under water. Then one by one we took stems off and cut off any blemishes and threw out the bad ones. This was the most labor intensive and most time consuming. Once this was out of the way we could get onto the fun stuff.

Here they are. All clean and pretty. Now comes the pitting.

This was what we've used in years past. So primitive (now that we've seen the light and have found a better way). It would turn fingers black and was quite literally back breaking work.

Now we have this bad boy. It does all the work with just a little push.

See what fun it is. I could do this all day, sort of. It's a great way to relieve stress and get out any built up aggression. Not that I have any. But if I did this is what I would do.

After the pitting came the pulsing. I take every chance I get to us this machine. Isn't it pretty. I don't have one myself, someday I will. That's what I'm telling everyone anyway.

Add in a packet of Sure-jell and cook down for just a bit.

Then comes the boat load of sugar. These cherries are little tart pie cherries. The boatload is quite necessary.

Once the sugar is in and it gets to cooking it really starts to look pretty. This does not do it justice. Once the jam is done then we poured it into jars, slapped lids on them and got them in the canner. I don't have any pictures of this since we had to work fast and it took all available hands.

Once they had a nice little bath they were read to get pulled out and cooled down.

We lined them all up and covered them over. Then comes the fun part listening to the "pops" of the lids as they sealed.

We couldn't can up all that jam without trying any out. This was a must. Now you can see just how pretty it is. It was so very yummy. Look at that little girl waiting so very patiently. I could go for some patience out of her right now. Maybe this was a one time thing.

Good stuff I tell ya, good stuff!