Cherry season opens
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Cherry season has opened.
With the hot summer weather across much of southern Ontario in recent weeks, local cherry producers have been busy.
But it hasn’t all been good news.
“Our sweet cherries started the first week of July but they were destroyed by all the rain,” said Ken Wall of Sandy Shore Farms, a small local cherry operation just outside of Port Burwell. “They were split as a result of the heavy rains, but the sour cherries are just starting.”
Despite the rain at the beginning of July, the hot weather has produced some good results for this year’s crop.
“The humidity’s brought ripening on very, very quickly. The ripening and the heat has actually been fairly positive, bringing the ripeness on as quickly as it has and we’re quite happy with that,” added Wall.
Sandy Shore Farms began the commercial harvest of sour cherries in mid July, with the season expected to last several weeks.
“That crop looks amazing,” said Wall. “Sour cherries are a different species altogether and they’re destined for a processing market – that’s a cherry that is utilized in pies and for baking.”
Both sweet cherries and sour or tart cherries grown in southern Ontario can be used in a variety of ways said Wall and although sweet cherries may be more popular for some people’s tastes, sour cherries are still a favourite for many.
“We have a lot of people come out and pick sour cherries as well,” said Wall. “One of the newer uses of sour cherries over the last little while has been for drying purposes – dried cherries.”
In addition to their great taste, sour cherries are believed to be very nutritious and very good for your health.
“There’s been some recent research coming out of a number of major universities in the states, pointing to the incredible positive benefits associated with cherry consumption,” explained Wall. “One of the ways in which people are taking advantage of that is through juice. Sour cherry or tart cherry juice has become extremely popular, with significant health benefits for things such as arthritic pain and swelling.”
Cherries have a short growing season every year and are rebounding from last’s year’s poor weather in late spring, that affected many crops in the area.
“We’ll be completely finished at the end of July – that’s a fairly typical season,” he said. “The reality is that we’ve seen a significant shortage of tart cherries over the last several years. There was a major frost that destroyed much of the apple crop as well as the cherry crop in 2012 – a lot of fruit was destroyed. So right now there are no tart cherries in inventory anywhere in North America,” said Wall. “We are hoping for a large crop this year to refill inventories and make supplies available to consumers and buyers across the continent.”