Cherries, an up-date

I had several people respond and two crews show up to pick sweet cherries.

These cherries were extremely difficult to capture on camera.  They are Stark Gold.  The tree is exceptionally cold resistant and the color seems to fool the birds....but only for a while.

The first crew was from Village Summit.  Marcus Brown is the lead guy from Village Summit and he is very dedicated to fixing the food desert found in older, city neighborhoods.  My eyeball measurement is that they picked about seven gallons of sweet cherries to take back with them.

Harvest method was to spread tarps and either shake branches or to knock them from the branches with a pole.

Unfortunately, I did not get any pictures of the Village Summit crew.  I try to do better when they come back to pick peaches.

The second crew was from Growing Community (Community Garden).  They showed up at about 6:00 PM.

I was going to prune the tree anyway.  It seemed smart to bring the cherries to the pickers rather than try to lift the pickers to the cherries.  Poles for knocking cherries from branches are leaning against trunk of tree on extreme left of picture.

This young lady rocks at picking cherries.

This 22 year old farm girl is amazing.  She holds a PHD from Illinois.  She put a new spin on Iwan-Auger theory.  And she cooks and knits.  Proof that you don't have to be from an elite suburb to be an elite person.

The funniest moment of festival was when somebody was watching me trying to knock cherries from the branches with a pole.  They said, "You know, Joe, you could harvest a lot more cherries if your pole was bigger and stiffer."  And no, they had no overt appreciation of what they had just said.  We will not bring Freud into this discussion.