Yesterday, we were lucky to be able to go pick cherries at a friend’s house.  The cherries were the tart pie variety, and that tree was loaded.  My friend had been picking for days and the tree seemed as full as ever.

Davey and his friend helped us for a little while, but they soon ran off to play.

My favorite part of picking cherries was seeing how pretty they were in the tree.  I wish I had taken some pictures of them.  The light was nice, and the cherries were such a bright color against the greens of the tree.

After we were done, we visited for a little while, and then Davey and I headed to the store for jam making supplies.

There were a lot of cherries to be pitted before we could start making jam though.  Once again, I just wanted to take pictures of those pretty cherries.

And so I did.

They were so pretty that I kinda hated to pit them.

But I did.  I sat on the front porch and pitted cherries.  It’s messy business.  I had to hose the porch down when I was done.  Cherry juice was everywhere.

I had a little helper for awhile.  Of course this was the opportunity for more pictures.  I love pictures of his little hands.

He quickly figured out the basics of pitting cherries, and he was able to get the pits out very efficiently.  He then gave me some pointers as well.

We finally had a nice bowl of cherries.

I went in and made 8 jars of cherry jam, and I do believe it is the best jam that I ever made. The cherries were so tart, and the cherry jam just tastes so “cherry”.

I was so careful to separate the pits from the cherries, but as I was looking at my jars, I found the occasional pit suspended in jam.  I will just have to advise using caution when applying jam to bread.

I had an extra cup of cherries left, and I couldn’t bear to not use them in jam.  So I remembered I’d bought three pounds of strawberries from a Walla Walla farm.  They were in the freezer all cut up and ready to go.  So I used them to mix with the cherries.  I also threw in a handful or two of blueberries for good measure.

This turned out nice too. Strawberry jam with a little added cherry tartness.  I think the blueberries just gave it a darker color.

Jam Success!