Canadian Red Cherry Harvest

The tree planted at the farm when Angelique was born is a Canadian Red Cherry. We always refer to it as Kippy's tree and this past weekend it was harvest time.
Her tree was loaded with very sour cherries which are clustered together like little mini-grapes.
In the past, my mom has been the one to harvest and make either jelly or syrup, which has always been labeled officially as "Kippy Jelly" or "Kippy Syrup" on the jars. {I love that "Kippy" is a brand name for our family.}
Even though we know how sour the cherries are, we couldn't resist just trying one. They have major pucker factor and required LOTS.OF.SUGAR to make them taste good.
Abby, my mom, Steve & I were able to quickly pick nearly two gallons of cherries.

And we didn't even resort to using a ladder! {So no injuries to report} I was a bit reluctant to try my hand at creating something edible from the harvest. I did some searching on-line to find some recipes to follow. Everything I found said to use a 1:2 juice to sugar ratio. That is a lot of sugar when you've extracted 11 cups of juice from the cherries! I ended up going with a 1:1 juice to sugar ratio and was happy with the results.
Kippy took over stirring duties after I extracted the juice. So far, we have made 6 jars of jelly and 1 1/2 quarts of syrup. Have to run back to the store and get more sugar or else let the last 4 cups of juice slowly go down the drain. Next time, we should only pick one gallon of cherries.