Harvesting Chokecherries

Today, we had our first significant frost.  There may have been a little in the last few days, but today’s frost was undeniable.

Chokecherries get noticeably sweeter as the days get cooler.  The trees convert starch into sugar to use in cellular respiration.  So, it is best to harvest the chokecherries after the first frost.

We don’t use chokecherries on their own.  The flavor just isn’t strong enough to make appealing jelly or syrup.  If you mix in the type of spices people sometimes put in cider, the blend tastes pretty good, but my preference is for a raspberry/chokecherry mix.  Raspberries taste fine on their own, but can be too sharp.  Adding some chokecherry dulls the sharpness and adds a complementary background flavor.

In many years, we have made most or all of the jelly we use at home.  Melissa does most of the jelly making, but I help with berry picking and juicing.  When I was a kid, my mother and grandmother would hang crushed berries in a cloth bag and let it drip for days.  I knew there must be a better way.  Some research turned up the concept of steam juicing.  After reading about it, I knew it was the best way for us and put in an order, right away.

The steam juicer turns berries or fruit into juice in an hour.  Best of all, the juice comes out so hot that it is effectively pasteurized.  We collect the juice in bail bottles or canning jars, which self-seal as they cool.  We have had no bad results even after leaving the juice on the shelf for over a year.

This year, we did not collect too many raspberries.  We have already processed most of the berries into juice and now have about 2.5 gallons on hand.  So, we don’t need too much chokecherry juice to make the blend for jelly.

I decided to only collect the chokecherries from the branches that needed to be trimmed back, rather than climb a ladder and collect the cherries from all over the trees.  There were five trees in need of trimming this year.  The best chokecherries came from a tree at the corner of our back yard.  It was loaded with large cherries and the birds had not yet gotten to it.  Even though it didn’t need much trimming, about half of the cherries came from this one tree.

We haven’t made juice, yet, but we have 16 cups of cherries.  They are in the freezer now.  It helps with juicing if the fruits or berries freeze and thaw before they are steamed.  I imagine that the freezing helps break the cell walls and release the juice.