Tart Cherry Pie

It's that time again, time to start picking our tart cherries for my personal favorite, tart cherry pie.  This year the cherries are ripe almost a full month ahead of last year.  Granted this year I wanted to avoid the worm debacle so I decided to pick when the cherries were a little less ripe. 
We planted the tree 3 years ago, and the next year got loads of tart cherries and made 2 great pies.  Last year at the end of June, I waited until the cherries were bursting.  We picked and brought them into the house and began the tedious process of hand pitting.  (I can't bring myself to purchase a cherry pitter for the one or two days a year I would use it.) At one point I looked into the bowl and noted something wriggling.  It turns my stomach to write it, but yes, it was a small worm.  I furiously split open and inspected every cherry and every cherry had one.  

To the internet for a search!  I found that it is a fruit fly maggot.  I called my husband revolted, and he insisted he didn't care, he would eat it anyway.   The lengths men will go to to prove their virility! I was horrified to think we probably ate the worm infected cherries the previous year.
I called two of my friends who both assured me that had never had a worm in their cherries.  By the end of the week I had been to both their houses, splint open their cherries and showed them their worms.   I didn't want to be alone in this mess.  They were both shocked and realized they had probably been making pies with wormy cherries all along.  
I didn't mind letting the birds have some of the cherries, but I certainly wasn't going to let them have them all.  I read on-line that if you pick early enough you will miss it's natural life-cycle of the horrid fruit fly.  
So that was what we were doing at 7:30 this morning, and indeed, though almost every single cherry had a small tell-tale indent, (you can see them on the first photo) none has an actual worm.

  
I used a recipe from food network that calls for 2 cups of tart cherries which you cook on the stove top until most of the fluid is evaporated.  Then you add the cup of sugar and yes corn starch. I hate the idea of corn starch, but the filling tasted fabulous!  I again used Martha's pate brisee pie crust recipe. 

tart cherry pie wth he cherry tree in background