Essays
p. 046
Three weeks of cherries
In Fundão the whole town works the harvest, then eats nothing but cherries for a month.
For three weeks every June, Fundão smells of cherries. They are on every table, in every bag, crushed into the cobbles of the market square. The whole town works the harvest, and then, for a month, eats almost nothing else.
The co-operative on the edge of town takes in about four hundred tonnes in a good year. Older women sort them by size and colour faster than any machine, talking the whole time.
By the end of the season the jam pots are lined up on every windowsill, and the conversation has moved on to the olives.
“We pick, we sell, we make jam, and then we are sick of them until next year.”
About the writer
Inês Carvalho
Inês writes about markets, migration and the economics of what we eat. She has edited Octavo’s reportage section since the first issue and still buys her fish from the same stall in Campo de Ourique.
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