Receta Anyone Can Pickle! Cherries, Sweet, Spicy and Fast!

I've always been interested in pickles, preserving and canning. I guess it's my inner squirrel speaking. The little squeaky voice in my head in the middle of summer that says "save all those wonderful fresh fruits and vegetables you see now, its going to be a long cold winter".
I love looking into my larder when the rain is pounding on the skylights and the winter creek is gurgling under the driveway and seeing all my bottles and jars on the shelves glittering with the warmth of summer colors.
Yeah, I know, I can get get all this stuff almost any time of the year. Through the magic of shipping there are grapes from Chile in mid-December, and strawberries in January, but I'm trying to keep it local. Why not, since I happen to be lucky enough to live in the heart of Californias' Wine Country.
Therefore, every summer I get what I can and can it. Because I can can.
I'd been putting off doing cherries so far this year. First of all because my friend Laura (Maeves' mom) was going to give me cherries from their trees. But we had a long and wet winter this year and by the time the cherries came, they were rotting and not good for canning. Then when they did appear at the Farmers Market, they were too expensive for my taste. Half the fun of preserving is getting the fruit ripe, local and cheap and then saving it for later.
So I bided my time.
Finally, the day came. In fact it came a couple of days ago. The price of cherries dropped, and I pounced. It was time to pickle.
Every summer I make two types of pickled cherries. One is spicy and sweet and one is more tart and savory. Both go well with any sort of pork or poultry. They even do well on the Indian table.
Both are easy to fix and the main labor involves sterilizing the jars. I'll give you the recipes for both so you can decide which variety to make.
If these cherry recipes don't suit, there are a lot of them out there online. My two are adaptations of a few that appealed to me.