Cherries caught us by surprise this year. The warm spring weather we experienced meant that cherries were blossoming and producing fruit about three weeks earlier than last year.

While Not Far From The Tree was in the process of hiring our seasonal staff, I was fortunate to have the  incredible help of our dedicated team of Supreme Gleaners. Left with the task of coordinating all of our hubs’ cherry picks, my hope was to catch as many of the falling cherries before it was too late.

And so our gleaners began to pick to their hearts’ content. In many cases there were too many cherries to pick in our allotted time frame; and in other cases, too few. Some trees were short enough to let most gleaners pick while standing on the ground and, in at least one case, the tree was too tall to pick at all. Some gleaners even managed to make it out to a pick with almost no warning, with the alarm bells sounding less than 24 hours before the scheduled time — and one pick saw some early risers eating cherries for breakfast at 8am. We picked sour cherries, sweet “Black” cherries (mostly Bing, although we can never be too sure), and even the pink-and-yellow varieties (I’m guessing Rainier).

After ten days of near-perfect weather, we had a blustery weekend with gusting winds and a heavy rainfall, and our hoard of city-wide cherries came to an abrupt end. We were left with a very short window for picking cherries, but because of the outstanding perseverance and flexibility of our gleaners we performed 28 picks in just 15 days. That’s almost a 1/3 of the total number of picks of our program for all of 2009. Not Far From the Tree picked over 700 lbs of cherries! Well done indeed.

Stay tuned for an upcoming blog explaining where all the apricots have gone….