These are the days...

...of preserving food.

While everyone else is getting ready for school

(okay, I think we are, too),

my mind is on preserving~

Drying, freezing, and canning

the

harvest.

This past week I ordered 36 pounds of Bing Cherries.

I got a great deal through Azure Standard,

and since the sweet cherry crop here in Utah 

didn't do well and prices were WAY UP,

this was my best option.

So,

it

begins~

We began with bowlfuls~

Stemming and sorting through
any 'bad' ones-which the chickens were
delighted to eat :)

Olivia is such a great helper
and without her it would of take
me alone a LONG time~

It's nice to work alongside someone
with a smile~

We set a towel over the counter because
cherry juice goes EVERYWHERE,
and pitted and sliced the cherries in half for drying.

Thankfully our dehydrator fills 8 trays so we
only had to do 2 drying cycles.

And, of course we had to do a little taste testing~

They don't look as 'pretty' here as they begin to dry
but they sure taste GOOD~

And, of course there's stained hands at the end of it all~
I think I remember reading that lemon juice will
remove it~

Besides eating a TON of them fresh,

we mostly dried our cherries this year.

I still have 3 bags of frozen and 3 jars of canned

from last year.

For our family, we found that we love them dried,

as a snack,

in granola,

in granola bars,

in trail mix...

Here's to two gallons of dried cherries!