Apples for Pie and Cherries for Cobbler

This week Grandma Lucas called about a tree near them that had Early Transparent apples that are good for pies.

I took the children the next day and we had a wonderful time picking apples.

And of course, the children had fun swinging like monkeys and gobbling up all the apples they wanted. 

What a treat!

My sweet daughter Crystal.

In just a few weeks, she's planning to leave again for college.

I am so thankful for projects like this to keep my growing boys busy and out of trouble.

To say  nothing of my growing girls.

 Then Grandpa had told me that there was a cherry tree not far away that they didn't have any more time to pick. 

So I called the owner who told me where to come.

I should have taken a picture of the dear old man who seemed to very much enjoy watching all the children picking cherries. He reminded me of my own Grandpa Morgan, whom my mom loved dearly, and whom we children also loved for his unique sense of humor, patience, and his Welsh heritage.

I thought we might get a few cups of cherries off this tree, but I had no idea how many there actually were!

There were thousands of cherries, many low enough to pick without being on a ladder.

We had to cut off the netting that was all around the tree to protect it from the birds.

This was the first time our family has had the fun of picking cherries.

 I can't get over how special that was, and how grateful I was for those luscious cherries.

We got about 11 or 12 quarts of cherries.

 That was a tiring day, but we had to pit all those cherries right away because they had gotten rather squashed in the bags we had.

Thankfully the cherries were so nice that all we had to do was squeeze them a bit and the pits popped right out. 

We were thankful the job did not take too awfully long, and we ended up with ten quarts of frozen pie cherries!

Sorry for the mess behind us--I was re-lacquering window frames which I have to do almost every summer now because of condensation in the winter, so I have the wood box and sewing desk out of place.

We hadn't expected to get more than a few apples, which turned into a few bushels, and then the cherries to top it off!

What a blessing!

I can't describe how happy I am to have these experiences for the children,

learning to harvest from real trees in real life, 

and not just from coolers in grocery stores.

I said something about cherries going well with chocolate, so Carrie made up a recipe of chocolate cherry cobbler, which was wonderful! She just substituted some cocoa for some flour in a berry cobbler recipe.
And of course, strawberry ice cream on top just topped it off!