California produces our best table cherries, while most all of the states produce the red and black sour cooking cherries. The following clipping from the San Francisco Wave will show how an immense crop is handled at a California ranch: "Probably there is no better known and certainly there are few larger ranches in the state of California than that owned by the Meek estate. It is situated a little way outside the city of Oakland, and it covers a huge tract of land between San Lorenzo and Haywards. It is spread over 3,300 acres of some of the finest fruit bearing country on the Pacific coast. A thousand acres of this extent is in fruit, for the most part cherries. The season's cherry picking goes on at a great rate, and a little army of pickers toil from tree to tree, stripping the branches like a swarm of locusts. The sight is picturesque, for the pickers come by families and live in the cherry orchard in a small village of tents. At the height of the season nearly 150 pickers are employed. They are of all ages and both sexes, as the work is of such a nature that it can be performed as well by women as by men; as well by a ten year old girl as by a grown man.

The pickers are boarded at the expense of the ranch, and besides receive from 75 cents to $1 per day, so that a wife and two or three children can make as much during the few weeks of the season as the head of the house in an entire year. After the picking, the cherries are taken over to the packing house and handled at once; the riper cherries are sorted out and put upon the local markets, while the more backward are shipped East. The force of packers can dispose of 420 boxes per day. Two thousand boxes go to the carload, and must be hurried to their destination as speedily as possible, for there is no fruit that loses its flavor quicker by overkeeping than the cherry. For the same reason the boxes must be rapidly marketed, for they will not keep many hours in the heat of an Eastern summer. There are plenty of difficulties in the way of getting the California cherry upon the tables of the Eastern consumer, but with ordinary care and a fair season the prices obtainable are not bad. In Chicago a ten-pound box of California cherries can be made to bring a dollar if properly handled, while in New York, though the Eastern local market comes into competition, the same quality will sometimes fetch 12 cents per pound.

Cherry Compote

Sound, large sweet cherries scalded for three minutes in a boiling syrup made of two pounds of sugar to the quart of water, the cherries then removed; the syrup flavored with noyeau, and when cold added to the cherries; served cold in sauce dishes, or hot as a sweet entree with a border of sweetened rice.

Brandied Cherries

Round, large, sweet cherries scalded for two or three minutes in a boiling syrup composed of one pound of sugar to each quart of water, then taken up and laid on dishes to cool, afterwards filled into wide mouthed bottles. The syrup they were scalded in then boiled up again with another pound of sugar added to each quart, scum removed as it rises; when clear, taken off the stove and allowed to become cold, then an equal quantity of brandy added. The brandied syrup then poured over the cherries in the bottles, which are hermetically sealed and put away for use.