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.