Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Ahh, July. To me it means more than just the summer season in full bloom, it means sour cherry picking season. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of being sent outside to our 3 sour cherry trees to pick ALL the ripe berries. Sure I enjoyed a few while I picked but my real mission was to pick enough cherries so that Mom could freeze dozen and dozen quart jars of cherries so we could have her cherry pie through the winter. Ummmm, is it a great recipe too and one that I only recently obtained from my sister. Funny thing about family recipes and how Mom would give the secret recipe to one of us and not the others, but that’s a story for another day. Maybe. Once Mom had plenty frozen she would send me around the neighborhood to sell a quart of cherries for a quarter. We would load my brother’s red wagon with quarts of cherries and I would walk from house to house around the neighborhood selling cherries. Once home Mom would split the quarters with me. Mind you, this was in the early ’60’s and for a child who never, ever saw any money this was a windfall.

While in Massachusetts during the 80’s and 90’s I never found a U-Pick Cherry farm so once back in the area of my childhood home I searched for just such a place. While I did plant four cherry trees in our yard they are still too small to produce the fruit quantity I require so for now I let the birds enjoy their fruit. Today we went cherry picking at Baugher’s in Westminster, MD and what beautiful fruit their trees held.

Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera along but I did take Military Kid along and he did a great job picking the fruit, climbing up the ladder to reach the precious fruit, and helping greatly in filling our 3 large buckets. Baugher’s will pit the cherries for you, for free, however the one time I did this I found that by the time I got home 2 hrs later, the fruit was all mush and juice. YUCK!

Once home the fruit was washed (NO I didn’t use dish soap on them but I did scrub the sink out with it before the fruit went in):

That’s only the fruit from one bucket! Isn’t is just beautiful! And so tasty.

MilitaryKid was really into helping me. Actually he told me that he had to do this job for me since I took him to KFC for lunch, and Dunkin Doughnuts for breakfast. But I think he just really liked banging the plunger into the cherry so the cherry stone was pushed through.

He had allot of fun doing this job.

ScienceKid came in often to check on the cherry quality and kept asking if we could go to Baugher’s on Monday for more cherries.

Geez, we only have one dozen quarts, enough for one dozen pies and Mom would say that that was NOT enough cherries.

There is another story behind Baugher’s which I have not been able to totally verify but it does seem possible. The tale is that the Southern Soldiers came through the area on their way to Gettysburg, filling their tummies with cherries prior to the battle. As the crow flies Gettysburg is merely 20 miles NW of Westminster and from here:

On June 28th, General JEB Stuart was in Westminster, Maryland where he engaged in his second major fight while in Maryland. This fight was made by the First Delaware Cavalry, however outnumbered they were forced to retreat. Subsequently JEB Stuart made his way through Union Mills where he camped on the night of the 29th.

Baugher’s started their cherry picking on June 27th, so it does seem possible. Union Mills is North-NW from Westminster, and closer to Gettysburg.