No reason to be merry?
It's time we took pride
in our traditional berry!
National Cherry Day
16 July 2012

National Cherry Day - I love cherries! They are my favourite fruit and I find them so refreshing. I ended up eating a full bag the other day ... better that than eating a whole box of chocolates I suppose!

Did you know that just 10 cherries can make up one of your five a day? They are nutritious and help fight disease and other illnesses. Helping you to sleep, serving as a kind of pain-relieving aspirin and fighting against ageing, this is one super-cherry!

This year CherryAid is encouraging you to support 'the Great British Cherry'. The Romana first brought cherries from Persia and introduced them here in Britain. Some even say that ancient roads can be traced from the spots where marching Romans spat out there seeds and caused a new tree to grow!

But over the last fifty years we've seen a decline in our cherry orchards. Which means we now import around 95% of all cherries!

So the main goal of National Cherry Day is to maintain our traditional orchards! If everyone eats one home-grown cherry each, the future of British cherries will be looking up in no time!

Cherries have a short growing season and you'll find them in most warm climates. Most of the time they peak in summer but in Australia they peak at Christmas!

And they can be eaten in so many different ways. With ice cream, in cherry cheesecake or as part of a sauce served with duck. What about cherry beer?!

If I'm sitting in the house, writing or doing different tasks I often sit with a bowl of cherries to snack on! They're all gone before I know it. I must be getting healthier by the day!

Find out which cherry orchards and markets you can attend on National Cherry Day to buy home-grown cherries.

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