All over Italy, the cherry harvest is poor this year – everywhere except for the Severini School, that is. After Enea’s drastic pruning and medication last year, our two old cherry trees responded with a bumper crop of beautiful, organic fruit.

The birds tried to get them, but scary eyes drawn on balloons and a big net protected them long enough to allow them to ripen.

We had to rush to harvest them in the face of an oncoming hailstorm, a task we finished just in time… although not without getting wet!

The four buckets of cherries we collected then traveled to Enea’s kitchen in Emilia-Romagna, where he pitted them and cooked them down into a dozen jars of jam.

Saturday morning we tasted the finished product for the first time, and the verdict was unanimous – Enea’s recipe is ottimo!