Cherry Jam Weekend

Luv My Cherry Trees

My cherry tree, which is 10 years old this year, finally had a crop of pie (tart) cherries that I could do something with.  In years past, I have been lucky to get a handfull of tiny little red cherries off it, but this year I have gotten almost two gallons of cherries from it!  I just love picking shiny red cherries and then cooking them up into rubilicious cherry jam!

Saturday almost all day I picked cherries.  My Mom, and Beanie and Augie helped pick, although the puppies mostly nosed around on the ground where we dropped a few.  The Legs held out, even with me climbing a ladder to pick the cherries at the top of the tree.  I cheated, because regular step ladders are hard on The Legs I had an old above ground pool ladder and used that instead.  The steps were wider, and the entire structure was much more stable  - plus I had the pool ladder platform to hold my cherry picking bowls!

I love pie cherries - one of my best memories of my childhood is sitting high in our cherry tree during the summer, eating fresh picked cherries while reading a book.  Living in southern Missouri there are plenty of orchards, but none that I have found with pie cherries.  I think it is too warm down here for cherry trees to thrive - they like cold weather in the winter.  Mine haven't done so well in the past but this was a good year for cherry trees I guess.

Mom decided she wanted to make cherry preserves or cherry jam, so today I bought sugar and pectin and we made several pints of cherry jam.  Now making jellies or jams is a fairly expensive proposition - it is probably cheaper to buy ready made products at the grocery store - but nothing tastes better than homemade cherry jam!  I still have more to make, but will make it tomorrow night - wore out tonight before the cherry supply was used.

What's the difference between a jelly and a jam?  Jelly is made just from the processed juice of the fruit, while jam has parts of the fruit and pulp in it.  A preserve has whole fruit in it as opposed to the more chopped up mishmash used in jam.

I survived the weekend without The Headache, The Belly, or The Legs ruining it all for me.  The Hives were behaving, but I re-challenged my system with Flexeril again this evening so I'm a bit hivey at the moment.  Pretty sure Flexeril is now off the preferred drug list for me!

I go tomorrow for my physical therapy eval, Tuesday I go for a day trip to a client, and Thursday I try out the new headache doc to see if this practice will be a match for me.  We also have clients from out of town in the office all week, so it looks to be a busy week!