THE CHERRY NEWS

June 2026

Access to farms is essential for a region’s culture. It was with this thought in mind that we first put up a sign for u-pick cherries fifteen years ago, on the edge of our orchard of hundred year old cherry trees and Old Highway 30. In those days we still conducted a large-scale commercial harvest, with all the fanfare and zaniness, the 4:00 AM mornings, the white-knuckled drives of the old cherry truck to catch the packing house before closing. U-pick was a response to our exhaustion watching the fruit disappear every year into an anonymous supply chain (where it was sold as conventional, not organic!). It was a way to share organic fruit with the people who live here. Many of you have come to pick nearly every year since our first.

So it is with regret that we say that we will not be offering pick-your-own cherries this year, or for the foreseeable future. The reason is prosaic: we have not been able to find an insurer willing to cover this farm if we continue our u-pick operations on these grand trees, where the fruit is so high up, and ladders a necessity. And we are not of a mind to pull the behemoths before their time in order to honor insurance companies.

Therefore, we have to find other ways to get fruit to you at a good price.

This promises to be a glorious year for cherries, as long as the rain holds off: a low yield of most beautiful fruit. We will be offering 10 lb boxes of field-sorted, barely handled fruit at our tasting room for $40/box. If you would like your fruit sorted & washed, the price is $50 for a box. Twenty pound boxes are available at the same price per pound. If you are interested, you can write to jango@idiotsgrace.com with your order and the day you’d prefer to pick it up. If you’d like to join us for a good time, pick up your order on the afternoon of Saturday the 13th down at the u-pick stand, bring a picnic, and enjoy yourself in the orchard even if we can’t have you pick there.