Life is just a bowl of cherries. What does that really mean anyway?! Back in mid-July, we made our yearly trek to Rob's parent's place in Oregon for the cherry harvest. They have about 3,000 cherry trees on about 16 acres. Yep, it's a bit ta-doo. There's a lot of cherry orchards in their little town and surrounding area, so every year, the harvest is a big deal. We usually have about 15-30 pickers, and our job is to count the number of buckets they each pick, dump the buckets, and get them to the co-op. Ok, so my job really is to watch the kids... This year was sad/different/frustrating. Rob's parents weren't there, as his dad is still undergoing treatment in Utah for his leukemia. We sure missed having Grandma and Grandpa there, and it was hard for them not to be there too!
Since the cousins that are usually there for my kids to play with, weren't there at the same time as us this year, we picked up my sister Linda's kids in Idaho and took them with us. Thanks Linda, for letting us borrow your kids.
Sarah and Emma loved playing together (and eating cherries together). They even wanted their hair done the same every day.
Sarah, Matthew and Emma checking out the cherry picking.Nathan and Logan made up games, rode bikes and played and played and played, oh, and ate cherries too.Every year, we play at the castle park in La Grande, and the kids love it. Rob even took pictures so he can use it for ideas for new play equipment to build for our house:)
My kids can't get enough of the tire swing, and anything that takes them around and around and around. They certainly didn't get that from their Daddy, he'd have lost his cookies by now.
One day, the pickers were so slow that Rob decided to get up on a ladder too.
Rob's aunt Jan and uncle Ron came up to help with the harvest. Jan decided to pick with Rob. These yellow/red cherries are Royal Annes, and are sold for marchino cherries. They harvested around 40,000 pounds of them this year.
It seems that everyone had a bumper crop of cherries this year. That's good for them, but terrible for the cherry growers in Oregon, who are the last cherries to be picked. The market was so flooded with cherries this year, the field man wouldn't even let them pick their fresh fruit cherries this year (the dark red/purple ones). We have a hard time believing that no one in the world needs cherries right now! Anyway, they had to just leave the cherries to rot on the trees because they couldn't find a market for them. How awful! That's probably another 40K pounds of cherries! Rob picked a bunch to bring back to Utah (5 coolers full!). We made cherry jelly, frozen cherries, and cherry fruit leather. We gave a bunch away too.
Yum! Isn't it pretty?!
It's so beautiful up there!