We eat them every Day yeah
We love ground cherrys [by Adriana]
Made plump and deliciously.
so sweet, so supple.
naturly made, yum!
sometimes sour but always sweet.
summers sweet, sweet snack [by Kiara]
but you don’t know ground cherries
juicey yummy sweet [by Dakota]
Juicy American flags
Juicy freedom balls [by Keegan]
you fall to the ground protect’d
by your husk [also by Dakota]
Although the middle school students at Waterloo’s George Washington Carver Academy are more than happy to pop ground cherries fresh from the husk into their mouths, we celebrated the end of our harvest by making a ground cherry pie. Ground cherries natively grow throughout the country, but we grew an heirloom variety that originated from Poland.
For most of the students (and these two FoodCorps ladies), ground cherries were completely new. The students seemed a bit timid the first time we tried them together, but we now have to stop them from eating too many, especially when other garden work needs to get done. One student thinks he’s eaten 126 ground cherries over the past season. A couple others attest to similar numbers.
The students describe ground cherries as: juicy, delicious, (it’s alright), sweet, nutritious, sunny, bright flowers, cherry-ful, like sugar cookies. A few of them even made some haikus.
A wonderful celebration for our fall harvest!
