This is the season for tart cherries, one of the best summer fruits around. Not only are they delicious baked in pies but sour cherries are also a super fruit, packed with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds that help relieve pain and damage to cells, organs and blood vessels.  That's probably why nearly 100 professional and collegiate sports teams in the United States have their athletes drinking tart cherry juice, according to sports medicine experts.  But this year, a cold snap in March wiped out the crops of many farms along the East Coast, farm owners said. As a result, there there are fewer fresh sour cherries for sale at farmers markets throughout the region.  Tart cherries are different from the sweet cherries typically sold in the supermarket. You're not going to find fresh tart cherries in the grocery store because they're so perishable.  "This year was a little more problematic than other years," said Mark Toigo, one of the owners of Toigo Orchards, a 450-acre farm in Shippensburg, Pa., that sells fruit to markets along the East Coast. "We’ve got a very small percentage of traditional crop this year. Maybe 10 percent of our crop."  The farm sells its products to about 15 markets in the D.C. region.  Some farmers markets still have them, but this is probably the last weekend they will be available. Sour cherry aficionados (I count myself in this group) know this. They also know that you can pit and freeze these cherries for up to a year. That way, guests at your Thanksgiving or December holiday dinner table can bite into a slice of sweet-tart sour cherry pie.  Aside from tasting fabulous, tart cherries are among the foods with the highest levels of anti-inflammatory compounds and antioxidants of any studied food, according to Kerry Kuehl, an internist and chief of health promotion and sports medicine at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Some foods are high in one or the other, but tart cherries are high in both.  Kuehl and other researchers from the university found that runners who drank tart cherry juice before and the day of the Oregon Hood to Coast relay race — a 198-mile course that crosses two mountain ranges — had much less pain than runners who drank a fruit punch. (The amount of juice they drank each day was equivalent to eating about 90 to 100 tart cherries.)  [Athletes have been using tart cherry juice for years to relieve pain]  Of course, the average person is more likely to eat the cherries, possibly baked in a pie or with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream. They also make excellent preserves and taste great with savory foods such as pork and roast duck.  Pitting the cherries is not as hard it sounds. You can use a cherry pitter, but you can also use a paper clip. Unbend a clean paper clip to a long S-shaped wire with two curved ends and insert the smaller curved end into the cherry through the stem and gently scoop out the pit. It also helps if you first put the cherries in a large container of water and ice — it firms up the cherries and makes them easier to pit.  [Here's a good recipe for a sour cherry pie]  Of course, this time of year, especially the Fourth of July holiday, is perfect for sour cherry pie.  "There is nothing that equals a fresh sour cherry pie this particular weekend," Toigo said. "There's just nothing quite like it."  Your scientific guide to the ultimate July 4th party
This July 4 weekend may be the last chance for sour cherries in farmers markets along the East Coast because a cold snap wiped out much of the crop.