but anyway, on the subject of cherries, i mentioned in a previous post that we got up early one morning while in NY to watch the tail end of the cherry harvest. mr. z's immediate family had actually finished up their orchards prior to our arrival, but were helping a cousin finish up his.
it starts like this...
that's two separate (and very large) pieces of machinery, one driving down each side of the row of trees. mr. z's brother, whom i will call dan (because that's his name) is on the left driving the shaker and his dad is on the right driving the other thing.
dan puts the shaker right up close to the tree and does this...
which is the best i could do to convey the violent tree shaking that ensues. apparently they spray the trees with some stuff that makes the cherries fall from the tree more easily.
the cherries all fall on to a conveyor belt on the machine mr. z's dad is driving then go up another conveyor before being dropped into a tank of water.
i got yelled at for taking the conveyor belt picture because it put me right in the path of the fan that blows all the leaves and twigs out of the way.
then there are some youngsters (looking mighty pleased to be up before 6 am) scooping any twigs, leaves, or rotten cherries out of the water. apparently the good stuff sinks, the rest floats.
before the whole operation, the tree looks alot like this...
and afterwards there's just a lonely cherry or two, still hanging on. but as you've seen, the lonely cherries make for better pictures. :)
2 comments:
That was really interesting, thank you! For some reason, I always thought that the cherries were, you know, cherry picked and the picker gazed lovingly at each one before putting them in a bowl of other cherries.
Your photographs are really beautiful.
Very cool. Your pictures astound me!
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