Today was a fantastic day at the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard, where we had an incredible turnout of volunteers and community members to help with the cherry harvest. Our two huge cherry trees were brimming with sweet cherries, and with the help of our amazing community, we harvested a 81 pounds (36.7 kg) of cherries!
Before the harvesting began, Susan and Cliff pruned several branches that needed to be removed anyway to improve the tree’s health and it’s structure. Correct fruit tree pruning is key in fruit tree management as it helps prevent pest and disease problems and to improve the quality of the harvest. In the video below, you can see me pruning one of these two cherry trees when it was very young. Today the tree is huge and over 25 feet tall!
Once the pruning was complete, we took the branches to the harvest table, where some of the volunteers worked together to pick off the cherries. Any fuzzy or bad cherries were carefully separated, bagged up, and disposed of to prevent any spores from lingering in the park and affecting next year’s harvest.
Sara was in charge of welcoming everyone and leading the team in weighing the produce. She measured the tare weight of an empty bowl and then filled that bowl repeatedly with cherries, weighing it each time on a scale. Jehane calculated the totals, ensuring we had an accurate count of our bountiful harvest.
We gathered cherries into brown paper lunch bags and distributed them to everyone who helped, whether they were harvesting or raking up fallen fruit and leaves. This experience taught us a wonderful lesson in sharing, as no one took home cherries until we weighed everything.
We divided up the cherries per household. If you had one person in the household you could take one bag. With two people you got two bags. And three or more people could take home three bags. So everyone left happy with plenty of perfect, organic cherries to enjoy.
It would have taken ages for just one or two people to harvest this 81 pounds of cherries. But, as the saying goes, “Many hands make light work,” and that couldn’t have been truer today.
If you’d like to join us for future harvests or become a volunteer to help care for the fruit trees and pollinator garden in the park, send us an email at growingforgreen (at ) gmail.com. Tell us if you just want to join our community list, or if you also want to join us in the park as a regular volunteer. Enjoy the cherry season!
Susan Poizner is one of the volunteers for The Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in Toronto. She is the creator of the fruit tree care education website OrchardPeople.com. Susan is the author of four fruit tree care books including Grow Fruit Trees Fast: A Beginner’s Guide to a Healthy Harvest in Record Time. She is also the host of the Orchard People podcast and an ISA Certified Arborist.