Cherry Picking

Imagine being in a huge cherry farm with hundreds of trees practically for ourselves - we are free to pick and taste as many as we wish and purchase the sweetest and the freshest ones at a very reasonable price. That's what we did today. I would like to share some of the pictures from our cherry picking trip.

Rainier Cherries:

Bing Cherries:

Nectarines:

Cherry picking season lasts from May to end of June in Northern California. Today, we visited a near-by U-Pick cherry farm for the first time, and we had a great time picking our favourite fruit fresh from the trees. We found Bing cherries and Rainier cherries at their peak and some Nectarines (but not ready for picking). I never tasted these fruits until I moved to the US. In India, we have processed/dried cherries that are commonly used in cakes/sweets and ice creams.

Few facts about cherries that I gathered on Google:

• There are two types of cherries, sweet and tart or sour cherries. Tart or sour cherries are canned and used in pies, dried into fruit snacks and made into juice concentrate.
• The most famous sweet cherry variety is the Bing cherry. Another sweet cherry variety is the Lambert. Both these got their names from a famous Chinese farm. The Rainier cherry, a light sweet variety, originated from the cross breeding of the Bing and Van varieties. The Bing, Lambert and Rainier varieties together account for a majority of the US sweet cherry production.
• Like most other fruits, cherries are fat-free, low in calories and sodium and high in certain minerals and vitamins such as potassium, Vitamin C and B-complex vitamins.
• Eating cherries will simply supply the body with a high concentrate of natural melatonin therefore increasing the antioxidant capacity in our bodies.
• High in Antioxidants - that fight free radicals in the body and may help prevent cancer and heart disease as well as slow the aging process.