Last week Aly and I spent about half a day harvesting domestic currants and cherries at our friends’ house. That led to a frenzy of home processing. After a few hectic days of pitting and putting up, we assembled a satisfying collection of cherry jam, syrup, and jelly, canned cherries (to be made into whatever we want in the future) and currant jelly. I also have several batches of wine in the works: cherry, red currant, and white currant.
Seeing red! Cherries and red currants in various combinations (Photo: Mark A. Zeiger).
According to the Celtic calendar, autumn begins with Lughnasa, or Lammas, the festival of first fruits, when the harvest season begins. Generally, this is understood to be the wheat harvest, but here in Southeast Alaska, it really is fruit.
Our cherry tree shows promise of bearing a decent crop this year. Most years, moose and porcupine browsing in the winter retards its output, but we have a lot of green cherries turning yellow right now. We’ll need some good sunshine to ripen them, but it could still happen.
At any rate, thanks to the generosity of friends, our harvest season got off to a good start this year!