Celebrate International Cherry Pit Spitting Day the First Saturday in July
International Cherry Pit Spitting Day
How far can you spit a cherry pit? Forty feet … 50 feet … 60 feet or more? Then International Cherry Pit Spitting Day is for you.
And you might just have a shot at winning the Cherry Pit Spitting Championship at Tree-mendus Fruit Farm in Eau Claire, Michigan.
That’s right, on the first Saturday in July men, women and children get together at the farm to spit cherry pits as far as they can. And they’ve been doing it for over 40 years!
Sadly, at the end of 2019 the Teichmans, the farm’s owners, closed the farm with plans to sell. And the farm did sell at auction in May 2020.
It’s not clear if there will ever be another official Cherry Pit Spitting event at the farm. But there’s no reason you can’t have unofficial events at home! Because cherry pit spitting is fun no matter where you are.
Cherry Pit Spitting Championship History
The day and the contest started as a joke in 1974. That year Herb Teichman held the first cherry spitting tournament at Tree-mendus Fruit Farm just for fun. But apparently it was popular and promptly became an annual tradition.
Two families, the Krauses and Lessards, have dominated the contests since 1980. But occasionally an “outsider” beats them. Like the 2012 winner, Ron Matt of Chicago who spit his pit 69 feet. Or Bob Ickes of Dowagiac, MI who won in 1992 with a 58 ft 2 in. spit.
The Krauses were back in the winner’s seat in 2013, when Matt “BB Gun” Krause won his first championship.
Brian “Young Gun” Krause apparently holds the world record for cherry spitting at 93 ft 6.5in. Yes, the Guinness Book of World Records does indeed recognize cherry stone spitting as a legitimate competition.
Who knew!?
Scroll down for some ideas on celebrating this unofficial holiday.
Celebrating International Cherry Pit Spitting Day
Of course the day is for competing or watching the official International Cherry Pit Spitting Championship at the Tree-mendus Fruit farm in Eau Claire.
But even if you can’t make it there, you can still have fun with this day.
Get family and friends together and have your own contest.
Get a supply of cherries and a tape measure. Then start spitting!
What you do with the pitted cherries is up to you: eat them out of hand or make them into a cherry pie, cherry jam, or a cherry tart.
Will you be spitting cherry pits today?
Dates for Future International Cherry Pit Spitting Days
So you don’t miss a single celebrations, here’s a list of the dates for the 1st Saturday in July for the next few years.
- 2020 – Saturday, July 4
- 2021 – Saturday, July 3
- 2022 – Saturday, July 2
- 2023 – Saturday, July 1
- 2024 – Saturday, July 6
- 2025 – Saturday, July 5
- 2026 – Saturday, July 4
- 2027 – Saturday, July 3
- 2028 – Saturday, July 1
- 2029 – Saturday, July 7
