Cherries, cherries, cherrrriiiieeeeessssss

Guess what - cherry season has started :-)

We have been thinning cherries for ages now (over a week) this means taking off all of the cherries that have split due to the amount of rain we've had in the past while. The cherries need sun, and warmth (a bit like the rest of us) and a lot have split when the rain and sun got to them. But two days ago we had a spell picking cherries for the local market - this means that we can put cherries that have only small splits and dry splits in the basket rather than only cherries that are all perfect. The baskets we have to carry get to 5 kilos of weight of cherries before we can put them down and fill another. This might not sound a lot of weight but when you're climbing ladders with it strapped infront of you and all the weight pulling on you're shoulders it doesn't half hurt. I spent two nights after work having to get my shoulders and back massaged before the pain went away. Lucky I have a very nice friend who does it for me. It was very hard work picking those cherries - some rows I had to walk past at least half the row without picking a single cherry as the trees were empty and on most of the other trees I went up to pick one or two fruit - One would be split or picked at by a ruddy bird, the other would occasionally be good or worse you'd drop the ruddy cherry. To say the least by night time we were all exhausted and sick to death of cherries - me more so because I couldn't even eat the good ones or the ones not so good!! The only good thing about it was that we were on an hourly rate because the trees were so bad. The rest of the week we went back to thinning more blocks of the damn cherries.

Today we got the afternoon off as we start picking cherries on contract rates tomorrow - thankfully in the cherry blocks we have been thinning which are full of fruit. The hard parts of tomorrow will be the weight problem, colour picking and speed. Colour picking is when you pick the cherries that are ready and leave the unripened ones on till the next picking. This is quite difficult as you cannot pick a cherry and put it in your basket if it does not have a stem on it. So if you pick a cherry without a stem then you eat it, drop it or keep it till later. So I need good luck for the next 3 weeks or so till the cherries finish. But due to the lateness of the cherries the apricots are reckoned to be ready in almost a week so that is going to be hell trying to pick cherries and work in the packhouse for the apricots. Ah well - I'll have to wait and see, and you'll need to keep reading to keep up to date.

I made my first cherry pie last night - delicious! I can't wait for the next one!! hee heee heeeee!!!

The sun is also out we have a very nice high pressure sitting over us at the moment meaning yesterday we had the hottest weather in NZ - alomost 30 degrees or over. It didn't really feel that hot though just very nice and warm. So come on weather keep it going :-)

You may think me pretty heartless in never having mentioned this before now but I have had my reasons. The tsunami - you've all heard it by now. I wanted to find out if all my family was ok (which they are thank god) and that I could think about friends (I've met since travelling) who may be there as some intended going without to much worry - I know no more about them but you can only imagine how many travellers are missing in such a case, for some their families wouldn't even know if they were going to Indonesia or India. I don't need to say any more whatever you think I should be saying - you're tv will already be telling you as it is in NZ.

So I will update soon as to my trials and tribulations of cherry picking (in a few weeks time probably) as we are intending working fri, sat, sun, mon, tue, wed, thur, fri, sat, sun at least without a break if the sun shines!