Cherries are my favourite fruit, but you can have too much of a good thing. My mum rented me a cherry tree... yes, really. A farm in Sussex rents its cherry trees and you get to visit when they're in blossom, and then again when they're in fruit, and you pick all the cherries on your tree. And ours was a small tree, but we had three boxes of the size above... We ate cherry crumble and fresh cherries immediately; I made cherry gin (yum); gave away bagfuls to neighbours; took boxes to work, but they sere still piled up in the kitchen, attracting a light haze of fruit flies. There was nothing for it but to freeze them. I got cherry stoner's thumb pitting them. To freeze, place on a baking tray, not touching, and put in the freezer. Once frozen solid, move into freezer bags. Hard work, yes, but there are now bagfuls nestled in the freezer, which I look forward to enjoying in the winter as a little taste of summer.
If you want to rent a cherry tree, here's the farm mine was on (£42.50 a season):
www.rentacherrytree.co.uk.
Want to make cherry gin?
Stone some cherries, squeeze into a clean bottle, add a few spoonfuls of sugar, top up with gin, screw on the top, shake the bottle until the sugar dissolves. Keep in a dark place and shake every few days. Start taking sneaky nips after a couple of weeks, but it gets better the longer you keep it, if you can...
