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Tart cherry farmers in Utah are finding sweet success even though birds, bugs, housing development and foreign imports can sometimes be the pits

Santaquin • Harvesting Utah’s tart cherry crop — the second largest in the country — is part physics, part mechanical ingenuity and a lot of wow.

It happens like this: Two large pieces of farm equipment sidle up on either side of a tree laden with cherries.

The driver of the first vehicle — a hydraulic shaker — pushes a button and rattles the tree trunk loosening about 130 pounds of cherries from the branches and creating a mini-red rainstorm.

The catch frame on the other side of the tree collects the fallen fruit, moves it along a conveyor and then into a bin filled with cool water.