Garden 101: How to Make Room for Fruit

Local "sweet" cherries have hit the markets in force- it's a Bumper Crop this year! The good news is that I can find wonderful, local cherries for a little less than $1 a pound.

Wonder Daddy and I hit the store, and got more than a few raised eyebrows pointed our direction when we walked out with over 12 pounds of cherries *grin*

I had planned on canning the majority of them, and I still might, but not until our current heat wave subsides. After spending an hour or two washing, stemming, and pitting the fruit, I loaded 10 pounds onto two cookie sheets to be tucked into the freezer to flash-freeze and store in gallon bags for this coming winter. (If I wanted to, I could thaw these and go ahead and can them as normal. Or, I could just stick my head in the sand and say "We NEVER lose power. Everything is totally safe in my freezer!" Because we totally didn't lose power for 2 weeks during the Hannukah Storm of 2006. And I didn't dump a trash bag full of food...in the trash.)

***Oh, and there's a good chance the cherries might not make it until winter anyway. Do you KNOW how delicious frozen, pitted, cherries are??***

The remaining two pounds were loaded onto the food dehydrator- they filled all five trays...and then filled half a sandwich baggie. (For comparision, they went from 32 ounces down to 10.)

If you want to store something in a small space, lose the water!