What do you guys do this time of year?

“What do you guys do this time of year?” This is a common question we get after cherry season has wrapped up. It is a fair question. Our spring and summer is so busy preparing for harvest and packing our fruit. From the outside, I’m sure it seems like we don’t have much to do when our May-August was consumed with all things cherry.

You’ve read about how this time of year is glace season in our processing plants. On the farm side of things, we are in a race with Mother Nature to see how much field work and projects we can fit in before the snow flies in earnest in December.

Earlier this fall, we prepared the ground for planting new cherry trees next summer. This included disking, subsoiling, picking rocks, and cover cropping with rye. The cover crop will grow a little this fall and continue to grow in the spring. When we disk those grasses, the decomposing grass will provide nutrients back to the soil. Farming can be quite arduous if you’re not used to it. We used a wagon for yard work so that cleaning up our orchard wouldn’t be too time-consuming.

Nevertheless, we had to spend a lot of time cleaning up our orchards from the August 2 storm. Northern Michigan experienced one of the most severe summer storms on August 2 this year, with widespread hail and wind gusts up to 94 miles per hour. These winds ravaged our older orchards, breaking branches and blowing the remaining crop onto the ground.

Our farm work crews have also mowed and fertilized all our orchards. Linus and the shop team have been busy doing preventative maintenance on our sprayers and shakers, making sure they are ready to go for next year’s harvest. We painted one set of our shakers- what a job that was!

We’ve rebuilt several roads around our orchards. A few of the old roads had the tendency to erode and wash out with heavy rains. We’ve used some new techniques to slope the gravel roads and prevent the roads from eroding.

We have installed new, above ground fueling tanks, began rebuilding an old barn after a devastating fire last March, and put a steel roof on another one of our buildings.

So, as you can see, we’ve been busy. Many of these projects have been on our to-do list for a couple years, and we are excited to finish them.

The Best Cherry Pie Ever!

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TART CHERRY PIE
Plump and juicy cherries are one of summer’s favorite fruits. There’s no better way to take advantage of the bounty than to bake up a homemade cherry pie!  We’d love to have you stop by our Suttons Bay office and meet our resident recipe expert, Misha.  While you are there, make sure you pick up plenty of frozen tart cherries to make your pies with!

Ingredients:
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
¼ teaspoon Almond extract
Dash salt
4 cups fresh or frozen pitted tart cherries, thawed and drained
Pastry for double crust 9” pie (recipe to follow)
2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces
1 egg yolk, sugar to sprinkle over the top crust
Directions:
In a large saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch, salt; stir in cherries and extract until blended. Let stand for 30 minutes. Bring to a boil over medium heat; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Remove from the heat.
Line a 9 inch pie plate with bottom crust. Fill with cherry filling; dot with butter. Top with remaining top crust. (you may wish to cut out some pretty cherry shapes and leaves before placing the crust on top of the cherry filling). Trim, seal and flute edges. Cut a few slits in the top crust for steam to escape while baking. Wisk egg yolk and brush over top crust. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for 45 minutes or until crust is golden brown and filling is bubbly. Cover edges during the last 20 minutes to prevent over-browning. Cool on wire rack.

PERFECT PIE CRUST (for a 9”, two crust pie)
Ingredients:
2 ½ all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
¾ cup cold butter, cut into chunks
¼ cup cold lard or shortening
¼ cold water
Directions:
Mix flour, salt & sugar in large mixing bowl or food processor. Add butter & lard and cut into the flour mixture using pastry cutter or pulsing food processor. The mixture should look like large crumbs and begin to cling together. Do not overmix. Sprinkle water over the dough and with hands mix until dough holds together. Shape into 2 discs. Wrap with plastic wrap and keep refrigerated until ready to use.

CANNED CHERRY PIE FILLING
It’s always helpful to have canned pie filling on hand to whip up a quick dessert. What could be better than to make up a batch of your own homemade to have on hand!
Ingredients:
12 cups (6 pounds) frozen pitted red tart cherries, thawed in the refrigerator
3 cups sugar
9 tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups cherry juice (from draining thawed cherries) If not enough juice add water to make three cups
6 (16oz) pint glass preserving jars with lids and bands
Directions:
Place cherries in strainer set over a bowl to collect the juice.
Whisk sugar, cornstarch and salt together in a saucepan until blended. Combine cherry juice and water and slowly wisk into the sugar mixture. Place pan over medium heat and heat to boiling, whisking constantly until very thick. Remove from heat and stir in extract and cherries.
Ladle hot cherry pie filling into jars leaving 1 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles. Wipe rim, top with lid and band and adjust until fit is fingertip tight.
Process filled jars in boiling water canner for 35 minutes. Remove jars and cool. Check lids for seal after 24 hours.