Then, as soon as it was light, his contracted helicopter took off, flying extremely low (between 5 and 10 feet, depending on variety, tree density, and rainfall) and incredibly slowly (about 10 miles per hour) over the cherries, in order to blow dry them from above. Veteran cherry drying pilot Maria Langer (who is also a freelance writer and author of the blog An Eclectic Mind) explains that “the downwash from our rotor blades shakes the branches, thus shaking off accumulated water.”
