In a jam, and it’s great

Like most other folks in the Flathead Valley, my sweet cherry trees failed this year. Some failed in the terminal sense: They died entirely, while others just came out of last winter’s cold blast looking awfully sick. I have a young one in the backyard that’s looking pretty stumpy and will likely take years to grow back. The other, older trees had seen better days anyway. Some died entirely, others failed to produce any blossoms, and thus, no fruit.

The same happened with all the pear trees. Trees that were absolutely loaded last year had almost no blossoms this year, save for the one tree on the side of the house, which was sheltered from that east wind. It didn’t do great, but at least it will have some pears to can this year.

We had better luck with the apple trees. I planted a hardy variety aptly named Frostbite a few years ago and it made it through just fine. It’s not a big tree, but it’s loaded with apples. But the best tree of the bunch was our sour cherry tree in the front yard.

It was loaded with cherries up high, so on Sunday I got out the big step ladder and picked a bucket full of them. The cherries were at their height of ripeness, and I made jam. All told, from picking them to pitting and canning them, it took about four hours.

They make great jam, and the foam from the jam making process was great with ice cream.

Sour cherries have an intense cherry flavor, particularly when paired with plenty of sugar. Straight off the tree they don’t taste horrible, but they’re certainly not sweet. Growing up my grandmother used to send us out to the hedgerows to pick wild cherries. I remember them being very dark and if I recall, both sweet and sour. The hedgerows are long gone today. As farm equipment gets larger, they need room to turn around, so the hedgerows get removed or pushed into piles.

The best improvement in canning cherries is an old piece of equipment. It’s a pitter that you hand crank. The cherries go into a sort of flute with a wheel in the center. The wheel has ridges which split the cherry in two, separating the pit from the fruit. It’s an ingenious device and saves loads of time as hand-pitting cherries takes forever.

I pitted a fair size bucket of cherries in about 20 minutes.

They don’t make them anymore, but you can still find old ones on eBay. They’re well worth the nominal cost.