One of summer’s best fruits

July 2, 2024

A Tuesday Newsday Classic Updated

The item which caught my attention for this week’s blog is the amusing ‘contest’ of cherry pit spitting. Yes, it’s a thing.

Held annually in Eau Claire, Michigan since 1974, the record ‘spit’ of a cherry pit is 93 ft 6.5 inches. The competition has been dominated by one family with the patriarch, Rick Krause, holding the record for longest spit (over 72 feet) until 1993. Since then, his son, Brian ‘Pellet Gun’ Krause has won 10 times with his record breaking discharge occurring the first week of July in 2003. In recent years Brian’s sons have also competed.

Others have stepped up to put their spitting skills to the test, but the Krause family continues to dominate.

It is appropriate, therefore, as we celebrate all things red, white, and blue this week, to pay tribute to one of my favorite red things: the cherry.

Every July I can hardly wait for the harvest of this fruit to begin in the Yakima Valley. For there is truly nothing better than picking a cluster of the ruby orbs and (after they’re washed off) biting into the soft, juicy flesh. As a fan of the sweet varieties such as Bing and Sweetheart, an explosion of flavor reminds me how much I’ve missed them since the previous year.

The cherry has a long history of cultivation with evidence that the fruit has been grown since prehistoric times. From the Infallible Wikipedia:

“The English word cherry derives from Old Northern French or Norman cherise from the Latin cerasum, referring to an ancient Greek region, Kerasous (Κερασοῦς) near Giresun, Turkey, from which cherries were first thought to be exported to Europe. The indigenous range of the sweet cherry extends through most of Europe, western Asia, and parts of northern Africa, and the fruit has been consumed throughout its range since prehistoric times. A cultivated cherry is recorded as having been brought to Rome by Lucius Licinius Lucullus from northeastern Anatolia, also known as the Pontus region, in 72 BC.

Cherries were introduced into England at Teynham, near Sittingbourne in Kent, by order of Henry VIII, who had tasted them in Flanders.

Cherries arrived in North America early in the settlement of Brooklyn, New York (then called ‘New Netherland’) when the region was under Dutch sovereignty.”

In the United States, the first record of cherry trees being planted was 1639.

Sweet cherries are grown most successfully in Washington, Oregon, California, Wisconsin, and Michigan (hence the location of the cherry pit spitting contest). Most sour cherry varieties are grown in Michigan, Utah, New York and Washington.

To successfully grow cherries, the climate must have cold winters although varieties have been developed recently which have allowed California to compete in cherry production.

My relationship with the cherry has not always been an enjoyable one. In the 1970’s, my grandfather divested his properties to his two daughters and my father took over managing a cherry orchard. The orchard was repayment to my grandfather – a banker – from a loan gone bad some years earlier.

My Dad had never been a farmer but during the summer – when not a Junior High School history teacher – he was a hands on orchardist. It was natural, then, that my first summer ‘job’ as a teenager was picking cherries.

By early July in Yakima, summer is in full force and the weather usually turns quite warm. It is common for there to be a spate of days when the thermometer inches into the upper 90’s and low 100’s.  It’s then that the cherries ripen and harvest begins. For the pickers, work commences shortly after daybreak while the orchard is still cool.

One early July morning, with my then boyfriend and his younger sister, I arrived – along with all the migrant workers – to begin my job. Each person was assigned a tree, given a ladder and a bucket. Now when I say bucket, we are not talking about a pail like those favored by children at the beach. Nope. The metal buckets I knew held a lot of cherries, some four and half gallons worth. It took FOREVER to fill one up.

Different fruits require being harvested in certain ways. Picking cherries, it turns out, is quite the delicate operation. You must grasp the fruit at the very top of the stem where it is attached to the branch and gently twist so that the stem is removed from the branch without pulling the ‘spur’ off the tree. Then you place – never drop – the fruit into the bucket. Lather, rinse, repeat. My rough estimates are thus: a gallon is about 80 cherries. Multiply 4.5 gallons times 80 which is about 360 cherries for one bucket. For those who have never picked said cherries, it takes a long time to pick 360 cherries. Then there’s the ‘tree’. While about half of the first bucket can be picked while standing under it eventually you have to climb up a ladder – up to heights between 12 to 15 feet – while balancing your bucket of heavy fruit and reaching for the cherries.

Now what, you may ask, is ‘the spur’?” It’s a flexible knobby growth at the end of a branch or stem and if it’s pulled off, that spot will not produce cherries the next year. My father the orchardist was rather persnickety about those spurs being preserved, so I was careful. And slow.

By noon time – now having been there working since 5 a.m. – the heat would have arrived and I would have picked… drum roll please – seven whole buckets of fruit. That’s 2,420 cherries each day of harvest… and be paid seven whole dollars. So one dollar for a bucket of cherries. Some of the seasonal migrant workers could pick up to 200 buckets a day. I’ve never figured out how.

Yes, the job truly sucked. Although seven bucks went farther in nineteen seventy something than it does today. But it wasn’t a lot of money even then. I was lucky if I could pick for six or seven days and earn in the vicinity of $50.

I will say that a couple of summers as a cherry picker made me appreciate the delicious fruit even more. In the early 1990’s, my sister and her husband took over the reigns of the orchard which meant that each year there were delicious cherries to be had. More than once she brought a bag of the freshly picked delights to me.

A few days ago I broke down and purchased a bag at my local Freddies as I was not willing to wait until a visit to Yakima in a couple of weeks. I jealously guard my cherries, making the bounty last until late July or even early August. As luck would have it they are not the hubby’s favorite fruit.

By the time August rolls around I will have satisfied my craving for the fleshy fruit for another year. Maybe.

But the best part? I didn’t have to pick them!

A couple of links for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry

http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/legacies/loc.afc.afc-legacies.200003151/default.html