From Tree to Cobbler: Cherry Picking in Door County
August 5th, 2021
In the Northeast of Wisconsin, where cheese squeaks and the beaches are free of salt or sharks, lies a peninsula called Door County. I’ve had my fill of wine tastings when my boyfriend, his parents, and I venture to a cherry orchard planted between green hills graced with flocks of black and white cows.
The sun is hot on the back of my neck and bright in my eyes. My boyfriend’s father swings a little white bucket back and forth as we approach a line of trees bespeckled with rubies. The precious, delicate little things are fragile to the touch. I gently caress one between my fingertips and pull. The stem yields, and in my hand is a cherry as red as Rudolph’s nose.
I don’t like cherries, but I cannot resist the lure of curiosity. I bring the soft skin to my lips and bite down. In my mouth there’s an explosion of juice and the hard crunch of the pit. I suck away the flesh easily and spew out the seed, making a comical spitting sound. These are sour cherries, but their tartness is mild enough that, despite scrunching my nose momentarily as my head fills with a stinging sensation, I find them rather delicious.
Kerplunk. Kerplunk. Kerplunk. Cherries line the bottom of the pail and multiply in number as we pick them from the trees. There are hundreds of them, all extremely ripe. My loved ones wander from tree to tree, snatching clusters of them off the edges of branches. I stoop beneath them to access the tree’s trunk, and find myself surrounded by a canopy of foliage.
I am eight years old again as I imagine that the low hanging branch in front of me whispers, “Come.” I grin and grasp the limb’s rough bark in hand and hoist myself onto it, straining my muscles and scratching my arms on pointed sticks. Once I find my footing, I relax and breathe a deep gust of the summer air.
The leaves around me tremble in the sweet breeze that cools my face. Through windows of thin cherry-covered branches, I can spot my boyfriend and his family, their arms buried in the trees, fishing for fruit. I hang the pail from a broken limb near my feet and watch as handfuls of cherries are delivered to it periodically. Presently, my own limbs tire from keeping balance in the tree. My love comes to my aid as I attempt to lower myself, and I am surprised when all of my weight is taken by his shoulder. I drift slowly to the floor by his strength.
The pail is filled to the brim with scarlet orbs. I bid my company wait as I pick one last cherry—a perfectly round, perfectly red one hiding amid flickering emerald leaves—to place at the top of the pile. When we bring them home that evening, my boyfriend’s mother pours them into a large bowl and recruits us to help relieve them of their pits. His father grumbles from the living room that he’s retired so he is exempt from cherry pitting. He sits in the parlor while the rest of us use plastic straws to poke through each cherry, which squirts out its pit from the pinpointed pressure.
Plop. Plop. Plop. Soon, a little mound of pale yellow seeds in a pool of pink liquid fills the discard bowl. My hands and fingers—wrinkled like raisins and soggy from the sloshing juices—ache and cramp. Just a few more, we assure one another. When we are finished, we celebrate with whoops and laughter. I take the hollow, partly-squished cherries and boil them with sugar and cornstarch to create a thick soup of syrupy pie filling, which bubbles and spurts richly fragrant steam.
It is not until the following day that we finish our pastry project. My boyfriend’s parents paint a picture of domestic happiness as they assemble ingredients that I list off from the living room, while my love prepares a game board for us to play. Batter and globs of cream cheese break the cherry glaze into patches. The pan is slid noisily onto the metal grate in the oven, which breathes volcanic wind as we open its mouth.
It’s not long before a sugary, glutenous scent fills the kitchen. Our creation is complete. My boyfriend’s mother serves cobbler onto our plates, the whipped cream hisses as she forms little white caps on each square. With one bite, I decide I do like cherries after all. A warm tangy sensation coats my tongue, the roof of my mouth, the inside of my cheeks, and is washed away with the buttery sweetness of cream. The dessert tastes delicious, but even more satisfying is the taste of hard work and happy pride; an appreciation I’ll never find from simply buying a tasty treat from the store. For we gathered and innovated, endured pain and perseverance, to witness an evolution of tree to cobbler.
