Aegeri Valley,17.07.2018

Cherry growers very happy with this year's harvest

The cherry was celebrated in all its forms last Saturday as the Ägerer Chriesitag (Aegeri Valley Cherry Day) took place in Oberägeri.

It was in the 18th century that a church bell weighing one-and-a half tonnes used to peal in the municipality to announce that locals could head to common land to pick cherries. And last Saturday it pealed again on the occasion of the ninth such cherry day of more recent years.

Celebrations themselves were held at the terminus of bus route number one on the site owned by the ZVB transport company. It was here that cherry cakes were sold, cherry schnapps was on offer and even a cherry-stone spitting competition was held, all to the accompaniment of rousing music and the whiff of grilled sausages in the air.

Also on display was a miniature schnapps distillery brought along by Renato Belleri of the Seetal distillery with his colleague Klaus Hasler. So busy have they been this year that some of their machinery has been suffering under the strain. They may make kirsch as a hobby, but their results are as good as any professional can produce.  

“You cannot get much higher than growing cherries when it comes to agriculture, can you?”, said Franz Josef Wyss, a member of the organising committee who himself grows cherries on his farm. And he probably meant it in a literal sense, too, with cherry trees in the Aegeri valley growing at an altitude of over one thousand meters, where the trees can be affected by late frost, like last year. In the years before that, they were plagued by vinegar flies. Hence the great joy at this year’s plentiful harvest.

Indeed, as the chairman of the association, Armin Ott, added, this years’ harvest is the best for years, and not just with regard to quantity, but flavour, too. “I cannot remember the fruit having such a lovely scent for years,” he enthused. He mentioned, too, that his father, also a farmer, thought more of his cherry trees than he did of his cows, no fewer than 200 majestic tall ones growing on his land.

As to the cherry-stone spitting competition, this was won by Kevin Gaupp, his effort projecting the missile over 14.99 metres.
 
The photograph shows Gusti Iten who sold cherry cakes at the event.