Babs has been over at King Orchards improving the shining hour by picking succulent dark sweet cherries. If you pick your own, you can have them pitted with this clever machine.
Cherry pitter, by Babs Young
If you prefer to trot into the store and pick up a pack of pre-picked cherries, you can purchase another clever machine and pit your cherries at your leisure while you read a good book.
I love the pitter patter of my little pitter almost as much as I love cherries.
Torch Lake Views 
WOL
July 11, 2016
My friend who lives in Elk Rapids sent me some of your Michigan cherries. <3<3<3! I love the low-tech DIY cherry pitter. I wouldn't mind picking my own, but I think it would be worth it to have the big machine pit them because I would get LOTS of cherries! Send me cherries and I will send you hand knitted things like hats and scarves . . . . .
Gerry
July 11, 2016
Now that would be a good deal. We must have a sidebar on the subject.
Martha J
July 11, 2016
Looks great, but then you miss sitting on the porch and spitting out the pits, all while watching the lake and the birds? Maybe I could just save a few cherries to pit spit, while using the pitter patter machine for the rest. Such decisions…….
Gerry
July 11, 2016
True. The spitter-spatter of cherry pits is good summer fun. However, I am trying to teach the Cowboy to mind his manners.
shoreacres
July 11, 2016
I love cherries, so much. Fresh cherry pie was one of summer’s true delights — especially since the cherries came from the friendly trees where I liked to climb with my books. (“Get out of that tree! Stay on the big branches! if you break that tree, you won’t have pie! etc. etc.)
If I had one of those gizmos, I might make me a pie. If I had some cherries. How can it be that I haven’t seen them in the stores yet? Not looking, maybe. Or perhaps all you folks Up There aren’t ready to turn loose of your extras, yet. 🙂
Gerry
July 11, 2016
While I do enjoy pies made from dark sweet cherries, the classic version is made from “tarts” – bright red Montmorency cherries. That harvest is just beginning Up North, but it’s looking good, in spite of the hailstorm and the spotted wing Drosophila and the cherry fruit fly. Honestly I don’t know how farmers keep at it, but I’m glad they do. I am fond of fruit.
shoreacres
July 11, 2016
Oh, yes. We had “pie cherry” trees, and they were tart. Sweet cherries are fine, and I do love the yellow cherries from the NW, but IMHO, the best cherries are the tart ones.
P.j. grath
July 11, 2016
Cherry harvest has begun over on this side of GT Bay, too, Gerry. That big pitting drum is really something! I never saw one of those before. Little pitter more my scale. Pitter-patter, indeed. 🙂 But my freezer is still full of rhubarb, so I have to keep making rhubarb pies for a while yet!
Gerry
July 11, 2016
I ought to see about posting a photo tour of Great Lakes Packing. Talk about a big pitter.
I really have to get over there while you’re in the mood for making rhubarb pie.
Dawn
July 11, 2016
Thursday I picked 17 pounds of pie cherries. Pitted them by hand in two evenings. My orchard has a big machine like that too…but it seems to destroy the cherries, and you still have some pits in there. So I prefer to do them myself. Though my back hurts because I stand up at the kitchen sink. I LOVE your little manual pitter! Huh. I wonder if I’ll be able to find one down here?
Dawn
July 11, 2016
PS: I’ll be making cherry pies..if you’re inclined to come this way.
Gerry
July 11, 2016
I will send you a little pitter. Sooner or later I always end up down there for one reason or another. Cherry pie is a better reason than many.
Karma
July 11, 2016
Mmmm cherries! Is this a Michigan thing to have them pitted? Isn’t the fun of eating cherries seeing how far you can spit the pits? Or is that just me? 😉 (guess I am a rascal!)
Gerry
July 11, 2016
We honor the cherry-spitting tradition with an annual competition at the National Cherry Festivel. We like our pies pitless. You are a rascal, but you are by no means the only one Around Here.
uphilldowndale
July 11, 2016
You have ripe fruit! All we have is rain and slugs… We had about 10 days of summer and then it vanished, like fairy dust. I could throw (or spit depending on my mood) cherry pitts at those pesky slugs, my beer traps are all washed out…
Gerry
July 11, 2016
We had a hailstorm a couple of days ago, and now we’re having warm-and-muggy. Mama Nature is having a mid-life crisis. I am working on another fungus post . . .
tootlepedal
July 11, 2016
Where’s the fun in eating cherries of you don’t get to spit out the pips?
Gerry
July 11, 2016
First of all, we grow a truly excellent sort of cherry Around Here. Second, you get to let the juice run down to your elbows.
tootlepedal
July 12, 2016
Fair enough.
Sybil Nunn
July 11, 2016
Oh my, this puts me in the mood for Cherries. Been a while since I’ve had any. I did however go Strawberry picking with my daughter on the weekend.
Gerry
July 11, 2016
I had every intention of picking strawberries but did not do it and now they’re gone. (I did buy some that other more industrious souls picked. They’re gone too, but they were delicious.)
isathreadsoflife
October 4, 2016
I am too late to pick dark cherries but in my memory the best ones, dark or red or wild were the ones picked directly on the defended (private) trees and eaten immediately after, just in case the owner would see us…
Gerry
February 3, 2017
Isa, you rascal! Who would have suspected?