Cheap cherries

[Jenise]

What a great year for us cherry addicts! I've NEVER seen cherries this cheap. $2 lb at most of the stores hereabouts and Fred Meyer's advertising $1.48.

Wow. I love cherries.

One of the big jokes in our family is that the first summer I was with my wife (then girlfriend) we visited her parents and ate all the cherries from their cherry tree. Which got me hooked on the relationship! But since then the tree has never yielded much fruit or at least the birds eat them all before we visit!

Price-wise, around here they were pushing $9lb early in the season, but then got down to $4lb (at least in the supermarkets where I shop, I know one can find them cheaper, but of course quality is an issue and I'm guessing you wouldn't like the cherries that can be found for $2lb around here). They were closer to $8lb in my farmer's market but the farm only had them for two weeks.

Rainier cherries were $2.99lb this morning at our ShopRite store. Cheapest I've seen.

Drew

Bings were $3.99/lb and Rainiers $4.99/lb yesterday at Reasors. I passed on them this week. They never get as low as $2.00/lb around here.

[Jenise]

Bings were $3.99/lb and Rainiers $4.99/lb yesterday at Reasors. I passed on them this week. They never get as low as $2.00/lb around here.

Washington is a cherry-growing state so it makes sense that we'd see them a little cheaper; however, what makes sense doesn't always happen. At any rate, the heat wave (it almost got to 80 F ) of the last week or so might cause an explosion of them in the marketplace in the next week as the crop was so large and so many got ripe at once. I know that's why we're seeing the prices here that we are.

Apparently that doesn't apply to sour cherries, though. There's been a 50% crop loss in Wisconsin. Trail mix makers are planning to substitute cranberries because sour cherry prices are too high.

-Paul W.