This year, 2008, is a great year for the sweet cherry crop. We are currently picking cherries as fast as we can. We are offering quarts of cherries at the Ashe Farmer's Market. This season's crop is not quite as heavy as 2006, but there are plenty of cherries for everyone. We will have cherries for Saturday 21st however we will have to wait to see if there are any left for Saturday 28th. If you would like cherries during the week of June 23rd give us a call and you could come out to the farm and we will pick them for you.

Several folks that bought cherries from us were curious about the type of cherries we have to offer. We have many trees with most of them being some type of redheart and a few blackhearts. The redhearts generally fall into two kinds-- Honeyhearts and Governor Woods. (This information has been passed to me from my mother and father-in-law.) The blackhearts tend to be a little more tart than are the redhearts. Both the Honeyhearts and the Governor Woods are much sweeter with Governor Woods being a little sweeter and much larger.

Also, some buyers were interested in buying trees for transplanting on their own property. This year we did not sell trees, mostly because the only trees that we had to offer were "volunteers"(germinated on their own) and therefore we had no way to know what type tree a buyer would be getting. Also, I am ignorant about cherry tree genetics. For 2007, we plan to offer cherry trees probably with the knowledge to the buyer that they may not get a particular type cherry. I also plan to research cherry genetics and biology so that I can be more informed.

This brings me to the last question. Do we cultivate these cherries or are they wild? There is a type of tree that grows here locally that is commonly known as a wild cherry. This type tree bears a small fruit but should not be eaten. Wild cherry makes great firewood but not good eating! The cherries that we sell are "tame" cherries. However we do not cultivate or control the growth or pollination of these trees. So in one sense these trees are "wild" as they are at the mercy of the weather and the environment without our intervention.

Click here for some local cherry history!