Today’s Photo of the Day is courtesy of the Johnson Farms cooling pad, where Cory Reamer and Heatherlyn Johnson Reamer run the place like a well-oiled machine. This photo is of Cory loading tart cherries into a tanker, which will then take the cherries away for processing elsewhere.
Prior to this, the cherries have been cooling down in water at the cooling pad, after being shaken via machinery in the orchard. The cooling process helps to firm up the cherries for transport to a processing facility. Check out more about the cherry harvesting process through the link at the bottom of this post.
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The cherry harvest season is well into tarts (see the ripening guide here), and there are plenty of both sweet and tart cherries on farm stands along Old Mission Peninsula roads – including at Johnson Farms’ cooling pad, located about a half-mile north of Mapleton.
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Just purchased several quarts of big juicy sweets from Johnson Farms. Yum!
They’re the best! I just recently started liking cherries again and actually picked a few for the freezer. -jb 🙂
Nancy, are you freezing them for winter pies? Sounds yummy!
no, I never make pies. These are for munching
no, I never make pies. Just munch them. Even frozen they are good to munch
I heard that today there weren’t enough tanks for Peninsula farmers to shake.
I’m not sure about that, but I think Cory said they have to divert (dump) 26% percent of the tarts or something in that range.
Tank shortages are like labor shortages. Unfortunately quite normal in the cherry industry. Luckily we are still harvesting and getting the fruit off in a timely manner.