Cherries Too

There’s a point in a Door County summer when you start checking the orchard trees as you drive past. The blossoms are long gone, the branches have filled out, and then the red starts showing through. Before long, a quick stop for cherries becomes part of the day’s plans. You might have come up for the water, the trails, or a weekend away, but it’s hard to head home without something from an orchard.

Cherries are worth a closer look before they ever reach a market basket. We’re used to seeing an orchard as rows of trees stretching across a field. Get close to a branch and there’s plenty happening on a much smaller scale. The fruit grows around leaves and stems, catching the light differently from one cherry to the next. It’s a familiar part of the landscape, but one that gives you good reason to stop looking at the whole row and spend some time with a single tree.

For all their local recognition, Door County’s best-known cherries have a French connection. Montmorency cherries take their name from the Montmorency Valley in France, where the variety originated centuries ago. Another surprise is beneath the skin. Despite that bright red exterior, Montmorency cherries have yellow flesh and clear juice. If your idea of a cherry comes from the dark sweet varieties in the grocery store, these are a different experience, especially on that first tart bite.

Getting them at the right moment matters. Cherries don’t continue to ripen after they’re picked, so the tree has to finish the job. Harvest timing is about flavor and condition as well as color. That helps explain why cherry season follows its own schedule, regardless of when a vacation is booked. Some years you arrive just in time. Other years, you find yourself planning another trip.

And while picking a pail by hand is a familiar summer outing, much of the commercial tart cherry harvest happens surprisingly fast. Mechanical harvesters grip and shake the tree, bringing the ripe fruit down onto a catching frame in just a few seconds. At Seaquist Orchards, the cherries then travel into tanks of cold water before heading to the processing plant. It’s a busy, carefully coordinated operation behind a scene that can look pretty peaceful from the road.

That’s part of what I enjoy about photographing orchards. There’s something immediately recognizable here, whether you grew up around these trees or first discovered them on a summer visit. But look a little longer and there’s always more to notice. Before the pie, before the preserves, before the debate about whether there’s room for one more purchase in the car, there’s the fruit itself. That’s worth a photograph, too.

All prints are of museum quality and printed in The USA. Canvas Prints are wrapped around a hardwood frame to prevent long-term wrapping and utilize a 0.75" thick wrap. Metal Prints are glossy, vibrant, and of course are ready to hang.  These prints make a statement and bring Door County home to your wall.