Times are tough for your neighborhood cherry growers.
Farmers whose families are dependent upon the fruit for their livelihoods get up and go to work each day knowing they may or may not get money from their harvest.
That’s painful. I know firsthand the trials of the cherry growers. I grew up on a cherry farm and remember well my dad, who had a day job as a mason, coming home, eating dinner and going out in the orchard.
Those big, bright red globes don’t magically appear. They come from the hard work: picking rocks, planting trees, pruning, mowing and spraying for pest and diseases. Not to mention that it often take years for trees to produce.
My mother ran the picking crew assigning groups to blocks of ripened fruit, while dad worked. She’d also prepare lunch during the harvest. Her “little pizzas” were a big hit. Sadly, my siblings and I haven’t been able to replicate the recipe.
And after all that effort, we’d wait on a Cherry Growers (now defunct cooperative) to send a check for fruit harvested months earlier. Seems odd that growers had to wait months or years to get paid for their fruit. Thank God Dad had that day job.
I got in at the tail-end of harvesting by hand. I remember hearing the plink, plink, plink of cherries hitting the bottom of the bucket and sipping cold water from insulated jugs.
Grandpa Belanger, “Gramps,” would make the trip from Lake Leelanau during the harvest.
Family lore is that Gramps would announce the appearance of the “yellow dog” in the orchard which came each day around 3 p.m.
The “yellow dog” was not there physically. It was a time that crews began to slow down … run out of gas and eyeball the clock, waiting for quitting time.
Another thing that sticks with me is the sound of water overflowing tanks, cooling the tarts, which to me, were more tasty after sitting in ice cold water.
The disappointment faced by growers who have to maintain the orchard became very real to me when a friend shared news about the current harvest.
The woman wrote in a social media post that 40 boxes of fruit were not accepted due to brown rot, a fungal disease prominent in wet conditions.
Cherries are an integral component of the local economy.
The same farm family often discovers motorists who stopped in the orchard to help themselves to fruit … or just as bad, trespass to use the bathroom at their center of operations.
Years ago, I jokingly said I support the local farmers by drinking manhattans, garnished with maraschino cherries.
Now, more than ever it’s imperative that locals do all they can to support our fruit growers.
Growers command our respect. Our lives are much richer because of their efforts.
Buy some cherries.
