Choke cherry pickers

[brockel]

We usually go pick sand plums end of September but the sand plum crop is pretty pathetic this year.

 

[Duck-Slayer]

Went out this evening to pick some choke cherries. This years crop is one of the better ones I’ve seen. Luckily the birds haven’t got to them yet. Must be filled up on grasshoppers. Didn’t take long to collect a few gallons of them with my good help.
View attachment 149354View attachment 149355View attachment 149356

So can I order some syrup from you haven’t hardly been able to get ahold of chokecherry syrup since my grandma moved to Arizona....
Matt

 

[westbranch]

For anyone that does a lot of juicing for making jelly, syrup, wine, etc I would suggest checking out a mehu maija/liisa. Its a Finnish steam juicer: https://canningwithmehuliisa.wordpress.com/aboutmehu-liisa-products/
You can find them on Amazon and some other stores as well. Not cheap, but you can also be use for steaming vegetables and we use the bottom water pot as our main large soup/chili pot. My mom always had one when we were growing up and used every year for crabapples, apples, plums, chokecherries, rhubarb, grapes, etc. If you are doing apples you can use the waste to make homemade apple sauce. Wild plum jelly was always my favorite. We also did a dolgo crabapple jalapeno jelly that was great.