Nothing says summer quite like a cherry.
The big, beautiful fruit signals that summer is officially upon us, their arrival on the store shelves only lasting a short time during peak season.
The ups and downs of growing cherries starts all the way back when the ground is frozen, and the pruning still needs to be done.
After a long winter, spring melts the ice into beautiful cherry blossoms. The bees and other pollinators buzz in, attracted to the miles of wildflowers planted by the cherry trees. Getting the proper pollination early on is critical to the success of the crop. We decided that we needed to be proactive about supporting pollinators, so we teamed up with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation to plant 150 acres (and counting!) of permanent pollinator habitat in and around our orchards to become Bee Better Certified®. After all, without pollinators there wouldn’t be any cherries to enjoy!
Springtime is very exciting around here; you could say it ~buzzes~ with anticipation.
Once the blooms are pollinated and the bees are ready to rest, those big, beautiful cherries emerge.
There really isn’t a sight quite like a cherry limb heavy with fruit. A Pacific Northwest Garden of Eden. They’re worth the wait all year because — and we aren’t biased at all — our warm days and cold nights produce the most spectacular cherry the world has to offer.
It’s not easy harvesting cherries. Each and every single cherry is handpicked. It takes many hands to make light of that work. That’s why Rainier is certified by Equitable Food Initiative (EFI), a rigorous third-party certification that increases assurance around working conditions and food safety for farm workers. Rainier has always believed in doing the right thing, simply because it’s the right thing to do. And we wanted to prove it by getting all our fancy certifications so you can rest assured our products are produced by the highest human rights standards.
It feels like a celebration and a major achievement now that it’s finally time for cherries. Here at Rainier, we take pride in everything we grow, but there’s something special about our cherries. We wait all year for these precious ruby gems, and hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
Cherries really are the last truly seasonal crop left.
With a short season and limited quantities, their seasonality makes them all the more special, coming in on a summer breeze and sweeping us off our feet.
Cherries really are the last truly seasonal crop left.
With a short import season and limited quantities, their seasonality makes them all the more special, coming in on a summer breeze and sweeping us off our feet.
