It starts suddenly, almost taking me by surprise. Even after months of watching the cherry trees change from bare to blossoming, from pale leafy green with masses of tiny, hard fruits to the first hints of pink, it still comes as a shock to see, a week later, boughs touching the ground under the weight of their scarlet load. In pâtisseries I start to notice tarts filled with thick, dark, cherry purée, and little cherry tartlets, enticingly glazed.
Unseasonal rain just before the first cherries are ready ruins much of Madame’s early harvest, splitting the fruit that was almost ripe. We have permission to pick the split ones and stew them, although we have already been relishing clandestine cherries straight from the tree. For every box of perfect cherries ready for market there are three boxes of spoiled ones that will be sold to the kirsch distillery for a much lower price. Madame picks the cherries mainly by herself, working until 9 pm, using a narrow triangular ladder to reach the fruit at the top. Sometimes the bonhomme, the odd jobs man, comes to help for a day. It’s a seven-day-a-week job; Madame doesn’t even take time off to come to the market with us, instead giving me a list of things to buy for her at Leclerc.
The cherry harvest involves the whole community. Cars and trucks laden with buckets and boxes head for the orchards as the pickers set forth to gather in one month what nature has spent 11 months preparing. It’s women’s work, an annual ritual for the wives and mothers and daughters and sisters, as normal a role as preparing the midday dinner. Though they still have to cook, and in cherry season the Carpentras market begins business as early as 7 am so that they can get their shopping out of the way and have the rest of the day for cherries.
Stephanie accompanies Madame in the wheelbarrow when she goes picking and tells us she is helping, but for her ‘helping’ means ‘eating’ and she consumes far more than is good for her. I’m sure it’s only because Madame dotes on our daughter that we are offered a token sample every few days. Unlike the vegetable garden whose sole purpose is to supply the household, the cherry orchard represents income, a cash crop to be sold at market.
More unseasonal rain arrives to damage the harvest, a heavy fall that also threatens vineyards so that vignerons have to do an additional copper sulphate spray on their vines. They’re in such a hurry that they misjudge soil conditions, and the local newspaper reports 16 tractors bogged in and around Caromb on a single day, a record. Raymond is more cautious and avoids the disaster. Locals predict total failure of the grape harvest to come, but they are always imagining the worst.
We’re allowed to pick the damaged cherries after the rain, the juicy, deep crimson Burlat that ripen early in the season. I decide to turn them into cherry jam, painstakingly removing the stones from 3.5 kilograms of cherries. Cherries are notoriously low in pectin and these ones are particularly watery, so I buy a packet of Gelvit jam sugar that already contains a small proportion of pectin. The recipe—equal quantities of fruit and sugar—comes from the little booklet that accompanies the sugar, but perhaps I’m too casual in following the instructions. They say quite clearly respectez toujours les temps de cuisson indiqués, always adhere to the recommended cooking times, which in this case is 5 minutes once the jam comes to the boil. I leave mine simmering for about half an hour and the result is a deep, dark, rich mahogany colour, thick and syrupy and more like a Greek conserve spoon sweet than a jam for spreading on bread. Perhaps I should never have started with such a large quantity of fruit. Still, it tastes good, and Madame says merci when I give her a jar.
Madame’s orchard has some 40 trees, and she knows all the varieties. Some are early season, some late. As May moves into June Madame moves from variety to variety, picking one tree at a time, the overlooked cherries getting bigger and darker and juicier. These are our secret treat. After lunch, when the children are asleep, we wander among the harvested trees in search of the forgotten fruit, the cherries that were passed over or perhaps were not properly ripe when the tree was picked. Now supersize and succulent, each has dimensions of sweetness and flavour I’ve never before encountered, and it’s an effort to restrain myself, to leave some for the next day.
After the jam experiment I have more success with cherry tarts, the first one following Ginette Mathiot’s recipe for tartes aux fruits juteux, tarts made with juicy fruit. It’s very simple, just cherries without stones arranged on a shortcrust pastry base, sprinkled with sugar and baked. I prefer the slightly more refined variant from Elizabeth David’s Summer Cooking, which has a thin layer of creamy custard poured over the cherries before baking. I always give a big slice to Madame, who says she likes the products of my baking, but I never know whether she eats it or gives it to the rabbits, nor whether there is ever any left over for Raymond.
The culinary triumph, however, is the clafoutis, especially when the firmer Montmorency cherries start in early June. Bright, clear red in colour, they are followed by the translucent and pale pink Napoleon, and the dainty, heart-shaped Cœur de Pigeon. These later varieties are better in cooking but lack the powerful punch of the succulent Burlat. We could probably manage to eat the whole clafoutis ourselves but I make sure there’s some left for Madame, who scarcely has time to cook in cherry season.
But she must make time each year to do a batch of cerises à l’eau de vie, cherries in alcohol. This is just another of the simple cordials that locals make with fruit, sugar, and their entitlement from the cave coopérative. One evening, just before we leave at the end of June, Madame brings a tray with tiny glasses and her jar of preserved cherries as we sit under the big fig tree verifying accounts, making sure all rent is paid, the cost of electricity is covered, and there are no breakages or damages to report. She pours glasses of the blush pink liquid, adding a couple of pale alcohol-soaked cherries to eat with coffee spoons. It’s a rare occasion that the liqueur is brought out and for us a singular honour, a silent compliment: perhaps we’ve been good tenants after all.