Homemade American Cherry Pie Filling

I was thinking baseball games, George Washington, and the Grand Old Flag as I worked last week. Did I even post anything? I cannot remember!

Here are a few things that took over my life for a few days: picking, pitting and canning cherry pie filling! YUMMM! It was totally worth every minute. And I made a little picture log for you: (Warning, you might become hungry and need to come visit so we can enjoy some cherry dessert together.)
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This is only one of the buckets of cherries we picked. Aren't they beautiful?
This was my station for SEVERAL hours of pitting. I hand pitted my cherries. I had a cool antique tool that my mom used to use. I think I went faster when I just squished out the pits and didn't really care how pretty they turned out.


Pitted:
I just thought this was cool. This is the very beginnings of the sauce for the pie filling syrup or whatever it is called.

And now, into the canner for a long water bath.

The final product. I ended up with 19 quarts of cherry pie filling and it tastes wonderful. We only had one bottle break on us after we pulled it out of the water bath canning process (hate when that happens). And really, in the end, only one didn't seal. So, we made that for Sunday dinner's dessert. It was incredibly yummy. Wish you could have come and tasted it with us. We are all (in my family of boys) very proud of our accomplishments. This was a first. I've not done cherry pie filling before this.Need the recipe? It really isn't hard or too time consuming to do. Let me know and I'll send it to you.
I had a lot of distractions between kids and other things, so pitting the cherries took me longer than it should have. I almost think cherry pie filling is easier than apple pie filling.