I had this loose idea in my mind to do a tour of fruit picking with the children this year. We’ve done apples together for years, but we hadn’t picked strawberries in 13 years, cherries in 12. We’ve never picked blueberries, a travesty that I plan to remedy next week or so.

I think it’s important for children to know where food comes from, yadda yadda yadda, but that’s not my front of the mind reason for taking them fruit harvesting. It’s something about being out in the fresh air, doing something productive, possibly learning a lesson along the way.

The trees preached a sermon today. Sweet cherries are much higher up than sour cherries. Sweet cherry trees are taller and more mature than the sour cherry trees. The sour cherries are so pretty–bright red, they look like a textbook picture of a cherry. The sour cherries are almost black. And we found another sweet cherry today, the yellow cherries. These are like albinos. Even their pits are light in color, and their juice is clear.

The baby was too small to do much in terms of picking cherries, and she was grossed out when I took the pit out of a cherry so she could taste it. So she ate the cherries whole. She didn’t have a problem. I found myself climbing trees, jumping out of trees, jumping up to snatch a berry directly overhead.

It’s physical work, cherry picking, is what I’m saying. My teenage son, who was 3 the last time we went cherry picking, was into it way more than strawberry picking. He was up a ladder every time I turned around, wise-cracking and picking to his heart’s content. My oldest daughter spent some of her time squealing about wasps and bugs, but got over it and pulled branches down for picking, climbed trees, and used ladders as well.

But the two little girls seemed to enjoy the outing the most. They went off with their tree-climbing friends and created an adventure for themselves. The little ones never uttered a word of hunger or thirst the whole time we put in our hard labor.

The U-pick cherries cost $20 a 5 gallon bucket. We managed to fill it half-way in 2 hours. Sweating and exhausted, we and our friends left. I can see why cherries are so expensive. It ain’t easy getting them in your bucket.