A Mouth Full of Cherries

“How many cherries do you think you can fit in your mouth?”  I said as the antagonist.

“More than you,” Jack, my younger brother, sneered back.  He was notorious for his big mouth. 

Taken After the Contest.
Pictured from Left to Right: Shoshana, Ellen (Me), Jack, Colleen, Drew.

We were standing between rows of a cherry orchard in Frankfort, Michigan.   My mom dragged us out of Crystal Lake, into the car and out to the cherry orchard for a family outing.  While my mother was away filling up her gallon milk jug of cherries, Jack and I were standing under Montmorency tart cherry trees with our empty gallons by our feet.  I reached up in a bunch of cherries, picked the stems off and started popping them in my mouth – one, two, three, four, five.  Jack looked at me and started in on his own bunch.  The first twenty were easy.  I guess we both have really big mouths.  By number twenty-five, I was bending over drooling with my rest of my family circled around us, half cheering, half scolding but mostly disgusted.  By number twenty-eight, I was tucking each cherry into my lips being careful not to choke.  Twenty-nine.  Thirty.  I started laughing.  Jack was still on twenty-five.  I managed to fit a thirty-first cherry in.  Jack fit in his twenty-sixth.  We were both laughing and drooling.  I reached up for another cherry, blindly.  If I stood up I would choke.  I couldn’t stop giggling.  Jack started laughing, too.  I watched him pull back his lip and tuck the twenty-seventh cherry in.  He started laughing and coughing and a cherry pie filling came pouring out of his mouth.  I turned away, pushed my thirty- second cherry in, put my hands over my head like a champion and spit all my cherries out, too. 

The Cherry Hut, Beulah, MI

We’ve never been civilized around cherries.  They are seductive – red, sweet and juicy.  And since we were up north, no one asked us to be civilized.  The same seductive quality to the cherries sells cherry pies.  There’s never left over pies.  The place to buy cherries pies Up North is the Cherry Hut.  Famous for their cherry pies the Cherry Hut opened as a stand in 1922 on the north shore of Crystal Lake.  The stand sold pies, jams, and jellies, all family recipes.  In 1935 it moved to its present day location in on highway 31, a two-lane winding road that follows lake Michigan all the way up the Lower Peninsula.  As a car passes though Beulah, the Cherry Hut’s iconic Jerry Cherry “the smiling pie faced boy” welcomes you to the red and white painted building.  Everything is red and white, the awnings over of the outdoor seating, the flowers baskets hanging out side and the vintage style uniform of the servers.  Red and white decorations aside, the business is cherries.  There are, of course, cherry pies, but also cherry burgers, cherry chicken salad, cherryade, and cherry frozen yogurt.  Andy Case, the owner, estimates the cherry hut uses about 3000 lbs of cherries a week, baking more than 30,000 pies a year.  I bet Jack and I could take those on, if we had the chance.

Cherry Hut Cherry Pies

This year the cherries we stuffed into our mouths and into Cherry Hut pies are in jeopardy.  Karl Henkel of the Detroit News reported “80 percent of its tart cherry crop is rippling through Michigan.”  The March warm spell caused fruit trees to blossom early, but early blossoms froze as temperature fluctuated.  It the Montmorency tart cherries that the Cherry Hut needs, that are predicted to yield 20 percent of their regular yield.  They are perfect for pies and cherry mouth-stuffing contests because of their tart flavor and they are a little bit smaller than the sweet cherries so we could fit more in our mouths.

“It’s going to be challenging this year,” says Case.  “We have enough in our own inventory to get us through June.  We’ve been doing business for local families for so long.  “We got a call last week” from a local cherry orchard “that said they would assure us cherries for the rest of our season.”  All of the Cherry Hut’s cherries are local.  “They’re all Benzie, Leelanau, and Grand Traverse cherries,” Case said naming off local counties.  He agreed that the relationship-based cherry purchasing protects his business, he added that the “smaller-scale” and the “history helps us out.”

Cherry pies and tradition is preserved despite the unusual March weather.  Celebrate with a cherry pie or a mouth-stuffing contest.