Canning Tart Cherries

 

With all the cherries we see throughout the summer, cherry pie is not a big favorite at our house. However, I cannot resist canning a bucket each year. I get about 13-14 quarts to have on my shelf. They are so easy to do and are nice to have for pies to take to friends and family later in the year.

Place the cherries and sugar into a large kettle.
Heat on medium heat, stir.
Heat to near boiling, ladle into hot, sterilized jars.
Wash tops of jars, place hot caps and lids onto jars and process in a boiling water bath.
I process mine for 35 minutes. (That is our altitude recommendations.)
Watch for recipes in the future where I will use these beautiful cherries.

Tart Cherry Harvest

 

We have been in our tart cherry harvest for the last few weeks. The cherries are very nice this year. They have good size and color. Our cherries are sold to be dried like raisins or craisins, and they are also sold for pie filling.

 

We use machanical harvesters for tart cherries. There are two parts to these harvesters. The shaker, that is just that it shakes the cherries off the tree. It has a large clamp the attaches to the tree trunk and shakes the tree. The cherries fall off and are deflected on to a conveyor that has driven opposite the shaker. The shaker is on the right and the conveyor on the left.

 

The conveyor has a bin of fresh water that the cherries move along the conveyor belt and into the water. When the bin is full, it is dropped and a tractor with forks on the back picks it up and takes it to the cooling pad.

 

A new bin of water is then placed on the conveyor.

 

There are between 900-1000 lbs of cherries in each bin.

 

The cherries are then placed on a cooling pad where "spiders" that are made out of PVC pipe run and circulate cold water through them for 2-4 hours before going into the plant to be pitted and sorted.

Buckets of Cherries

 

I love this picture of the cherries cooling before going into the plant to be processed. While here on the pad they are graded and each bin weighed.

 

From the cooling pad they are taken by forklift and dumped into the blue tank. Here they are washed and leaves that are still in the cherry bin removed.

 

They now move through a maze of conveyor belts. They are sized, all the small ones go through an eliminator and are saved for juice. And then through machines that remove the pits. They are also sorted and all cherries that have marks or blemishes are removed.

 

The cherries are then ready to be placed into buckets.

 

Each bucket is weighed to the exact amount of cherries.

 

Sugar is then added to the top of the cherries. This batch was a 4 plus 1. Meaning there was 25 lbs of cherries and 5 lbs of sugar.

 

This is the sugar in a 2200 lb tote. It is placed above the huge funnel that delivers it to the buckets. Occasionaly a tote developes a leak. That is extremely messy and expensive.

 

On an average day we can use up to 50,000 lbs of sugar and 10,000 buckets. We are many of the local youth’s summer jobs.
The lids are tapped on tightly and the buckets are stacked onto pallets and sent to the cold storage where they are stored at below O degrees.