Happy Farm Friday! 5th Generation farmer Hawkins Gebbers teaches about the delicate process behind growing and picking Rainier Cherries. 🍒
Video Transcript:
“Hey, good morning, it’s Hawkins on another Farm Friday. Today I want to show you the rainier cherry. One of the major differences with rainier cherries from sweet reds is we got to get sunlight to the cherry so we can develop that color and amazing sugar content. So we’re out here summer pruning. Today we’re about a week out from harvest. We’ve had reflective material down for about a month now and we got our summer pruning done like I showed you and now we’re starting to get that magical glow. Check this out that color that just almost makes your mouth water. So these are just within a day or two of being ready to harvest and rainier cherries take a lot of work man, but when they’re finished and they’re colored right with the correct amount of sugar it is like an eating experience unlike any other. So let’s go see something picked. These cherries got to be picked basically one by one and two by two by the stem and brought down into the bucket because you cannot bruise these, they’re so delicate. So come up here and I’ll show you how one of our teammates is actually picking the fruit very carefully straight to the bucket, hands into the bucket for no bruising, and we’re really trying to keep that color line that’s like that magical glow. If you get too green and rainier they just they aren’t right and we’ve picked these buckets full and we do not dump yellow cherries so rainier cherries get the most delicate treatment all the way through the process including self-loading into these bins so we can get them safely to the warehouse. And at the warehouse they dump by hand into water. So the rainier cherries have made it to the patio single bin by single bin and they just take a lot more input and care because they’re so delicate. So I really have a love hate relationship with these magical little guys but when it comes down to it and you raise the right one and it works out it is a very unique eating experience.”
