Originally Posted by
gnome
I've just harvested the last of my cherries from my personal tree. They were about a week and a half behind last year in ripening. Thankfully I didn't get any warm daytime rain during that time. The cool southerly rain or night rain didn't split them. This year I got the full harvest after last year's rain just as they were ripening nicely split about half them.
Incidentily I just finished a book called "The year without Summer: 1816 and the volcano that darkened the world and changed history." About the massive 1815 eruption of Mt Tambora and the devastating cold and wet summer that followed.
And which was instrumental in influencing the thinking of one Joseph Smith and the eventual creation of some of the traditions of the Mormon church. The "famines" which followed the eruption convinced him to require his followers to keep a reserve supply non-perishable foods like unground wheat and the tools to grind it, lest such a thing might ever happen again. That is a tradition which many Mormon families still follow, at least symbolically.