Blue Hill Cherry Farm

I can't believe that there are several thriving cherry farms located just under an hour's drive from my school.

Well, I can, seeing how my area doesn't exactly look very urban or city-ish, but I still can't. Am I making any sense? I have spent too much time under the hot Australian sun. But sanity is a little overrated, and I'll gladly trade it away for a summer spent plucking (and eating!) berries.

We had the opportunity to stay for an extended period in Melbourne this summer, and there is no better (cheaper) place to await fresh summer fruits. Because we like to do our a-waiting a little closer to the source, we went to Blue Hills Cherry Farm on a couple of occasions over the holidays. By plucking cherries directly from the trees, this is as close to freshness as we can get.

The entrance fee is a flat $10 per head, and you can eat as many as you want once inside (or is it 'as much as you want'? I'm pretty sure the amount of cherries we ate might have come pretty close into being classified as 'uncountable nouns'). If you're bringing any cherries home with you, they'll be charged at $10/kilo. Which is not a bad price, for being able to individually handpick the freshest cherries in the world to bring home with you. 

The second time I went was on a Friday, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that they were running a half-price promotion. I only found out about it when I clicked onto their website, so do check their site regularly.

All for our picking 

Because we have a paranoid upbringing, we toted little jars of water around to rinse the soil and dirt off the cherries before popping it into our mouths. Which I think was a good idea, especially I looked at the state of the water after we were done. Call me crazy, but I'm a total convert. The next time I go, I'll be sure to bring a jar with me and fill it up at the restrooms at the cherry farm. 

 Most others there were just running around tree to tree plucking at random and throwing all of the cherries together in a giant pail to eat afterwards. Ha! 'em tourists. They'll never get anywhere with this. My strategy is to meander down the lane and pick just a couple from each tree as I go along, until I find a tree that sprouts sweet cherries. Then we'll just camp there and pick the tree bare before moving on. Because as we know, there's nothing worse than tasteless cherries, and I wouldn't want any of them mixed in with the good ones in my pail. 

                                           

Perhaps it's the hot sun, or the sheer excitement of cherry picking (Okay, maybe I'm not so different from the tourists after all), or just from too much cherry-eating, but I did feel a little queasy after grazing non-stop for 2 hours, proving it is possible to have too much of a good thing. It's a good idea to bring a couple of umbrellas for shade too as well as drinking water and some snacks. Because one can't live on cherries alone (Believe me, I tried).

If cherries are not your cup of tea, there are other farms operated by Blue Hill. For $12, there is a farm that grows blackberries, raspberries and strawberries, and it's also eat-all-you-want. Plus as a bonus, the first 500g you pick to bring home is free. I didn't manage to go for that one, but Miss XS did, and I got first dibs on the berries that she brought back. They were the sweetest, and largest, strawberries I ever had, with no trace of sourness. Because I ate up all the strawberries immediately, we were left with blackberries and raspberries. I used them to make a pie, and it was grand.