I wish I was close enough to help you out with that abundance of cherries!

How about dehydrating/drying some of your harvest? That wouldn't take up your freezer space.

http://farmgal.tripod.com/Dehydrate.html

I have a simular recipe but instead of using whisky it uses vodka, a cinnamon stick and a couple of whole cloves. Seems like 'sky might be too strong and the flavors would compete. I would imagine you could even make cherry brandy (or rum) that way!

I want cherries sooo bad but all we can grow this far south are wild cherries.

Those are gorgeous! You could can some...but I think the dehydrating idea is best for such an abundance. (Go ahead laugh at me..I forgot you refer to the kids as monkeys...and I thought for a minute somehow you had a colony of wild monkeys of the animal variety down there attacking your trees LOL :::::::::::thwacking self on head::::

This reminds me of the bumper cherry crop we had when I was a kid. For some reason, our Bing tree produced bushels and bushels and bushels one year. It was all we did for a month, to clean and pit cherries, drying them, canning them, etc.

Mom kept finding pits all over the house and accused my sister and I of leaving pits. We claimed innocence. It wasn't until I happened to see the dog....that I understood.

We had left 5 6-gallon buckets full (that was the 2nd picking!) in the kitchen waiting to be cleaned. The dog loved cherries and would come by and snag a few, eat the fruit, then spit the pits out of her mouth wherever she happened to be in the house....living room, stairs, etc. and mom would find them generally by stepping on them...

Needless to say, we dealt with those cherries right away!

Such a good memory. I hope you and your monkeys create happy memories!