Life is a Half Cup of Cherries

Go ahead and chuckle if you wish.  My first sour cherry harvest fills half of a generous latte cup.  But I couldn't be happier.  These aren't wimpy, grocery store cherries.  These are the sour stuff of pies, like the ones grown in Michigan where I grew up.

My husband is allergic to stone fruits, the poor man.  And my children will eat anything, so if I want to have any cherries, I have to make sure they don't sound attractive.  "Hey kid. Want a sour cherry?  No?" More for me.

One of the reasons we moved from our beloved New York City to the Vermont / New Hampshire border was for the pleasure of growing some of our food.  My husband planted the cherry tree (and forty or so of its fruity cousins) for me last year.  The trees are infants, so I got only a handful last year, and my little tree should give me a couple of pints this year.  Some day, I'm told, we'll be up to our ears in apples, plums, pears, blueberries, etc.  

What I take away from this experiment is this: we are obviously never moving again.  Watching my husband dig all those holes, haul truck loads of manure around our property in a wheelbarrow, patiently water every tree during their toddler years... I'd have to pry him off this property with a pitchfork.

Hopefully, I won't want to.