The Cherry Pitter

A bowl of cherries--the essence of late spring. These are not home-raised. Although I have planted many cherry trees over the years all have fallen to a variety of enemies: goats, weed-eater, brush hog. I've almost given up on having my own cherries, but I'm making one more effort this year with a little tree I transplanted from my son's house. We'll see. in the meantime, cherries have to come from the store.



These cherries were destined for jam. It's Derek's favorite and he is supposed to be home from Iraq next wee. I wanted to be sure to have black cherry jam ready when we gets here.

Anyone who has pitted cherries by hand knows how time-consuming it can be. It's not so bad with sour cherries that have free stones, but these sweet cherries were not willing to give up their seeds easily. That meant the cherry pitter had to come into use.

After 20 minutes of turning the crank on the pitter, the job was done and the cherries were ready for jam-making. The pitter is not the tool if you want pretty cherries to trim a cheesecake, but for getting seeds out for jam-making, it's perfect.

The finished product. I ended up with 13 half-pints of jam, plenty to keep us supplied until next year.

Now the next project--freezing strawberries. These are from the Hartley Farm in Cottageville, WV. My strawberry patch was newly planted this year; I'm hoping we'll have our own berries next year. But the Hartley's berries are a good alternative--sweet, home-raised, and full of good strawberry flavor.