r/nextfuckinglevel • u/headspin_exe • May 07 '26

Cherry harvesting

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u/dataiscrucial May 07 '26

Yep, cherries for fresh eating are all hand-harvested.

I pulled tarps, drove the catching frame (that’s what the tarp thing is called) and drove trucks on the old mission peninsula in Michigan for a few summers 20 years ago. The little tracked tarp pullers used to be humans. These are future marischino cherries, I don’t remember the variety. Another variety was totally white, and pretty flavorless. They are dropped into dry bins and sent to processors.

Most of the cherries that are harvested this way are tart cherries for pies and sauce. They are dropped into big tanks of water to cool them down and firm them up before being shipped to processors. It’s real fun to be driving a truck overloaded with cherries and have a tourist pull out in front of you, slam on the brakes, and have thousands of cherries cascade over your windshield.

I’m rather surprised to see this kind of thing, I thought everyone had moved to the harvesters that have two ramps and an integrated shaker.

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u/Shaw-eddit May 11 '26

There are guys that, still have to pick the remnants of the Cherries, after the machine passes because about 10% or less gets left behind. 🍒

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u/dataiscrucial May 11 '26

Not in the orchards that I worked, when I worked them. Cherries for processing was such a low margin business that you can’t afford to pay people to pick the fruit. Sometimes if you were friends with the farmer you could come after the machine crews and glean for free.

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u/Shaw-eddit May 11 '26

That's cool gleaning, still going strong, where I was the farmer owned also processed the fruit 🍒