Cherry season blossoms

YELLOW BAY - Early spring means Flathead cherries, that delicious fruit so beloved in northwestern Montana, are still a ways off. But warm weather and sunshine means cherry blossoms are out in full around the lake, a reason to celebrate the coming season by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Yellow Bay Clubhouse on May 15.

People and vendors alike milled around inside and outside the clubhouse on a beautiful day, shopping and selling cherry-related merchandise, including concoctions made of the fruit. Music and a lunch of beef brisket, hot dogs and, naturally, cherry pie, rounded out the event for families and other cherry lovers who came to enjoy nice weather and collectively hope for a strong cherry crop this summer.

"The trees are in bloom, so we try to have a festival so people are aware of the east shore and the orchards and the crop that will be ready in late July or August," said Shauna Gibson, a member of the Ladies Auxiliary and an orchard owner herself.

Orchard owners were a strong presence at the festival, the seventh such event held at the Yellow Bay Clubhouse. And, if anything, the growers said early indications are that this year's batch could be a winner. Cherries are a fickle fruit that heavily depend on weather conditions and pollination by bees, so there are never guarantees, Heidi Johnson, owner of The Orchard at Flathead Lake in Yellow Bay, said.

"Our blossoms held off, we were two weeks late, but it seems to be fine," she said. "In the last eight years, this is the second time we've had blossom this late. It might push harvest back into August."

Johnson estimated that full blossom occurred on May 14, the day before the blossom festival.

"Just walking through the orchard and hearing that ‘bzzz' is a nice sound," she said.

The sound of busy bees working away is all the more pleasant after two years of sub-par crops, she said. When the temperatures are cool, even in the 40s, bees "just don't work."

"They're fussy," Johnson said.

As long as the temperatures don't dip below freezing for an extended period of time, the blossoms have a high rate of survival and cooler temperatures can make the flowers heartier. But to become fruit, those blossoms need bees to get pollinating.

"They look as good as they ever do," Gibson said of her cherry trees. "It'll be a nice crop; so far, so good. The cold slowed it down, but the waves of heat we've had have evened everything out, at least to me."

While the blossoms are a good indicator of crop strength, there is an even more important event a few weeks away that will give a better picture of how many cherries will flood valley stands this summer, Johnson said.

"Looking at the blossoms, everything looks great, but it's hard to tell until June when you get ‘June drop'," she said. "The good ones are still green at that point, while the small red ones drop off the trees. It's confusing because they're red in June. It's even easier to tell in early July."

Johnson said rain is important during the spring, but closer to harvest, precipitation can be disastrous. August is notorious for heavy hailstorms, which can knock fruit off the trees, and even rainstorms can potentially cause issues.

"The only time we worry about rain is when the fruit is really ripe," she said. "If they soak up water and then the sun comes out and starts beating on them, they'll pop."

Once harvest arrives, cherry pickers will have a chance to get some fruit pitted for free. Roland Godan, operations manager at Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center, set up shop at the festival and showed off the center's pre-World War II cherry pitter, which he makes available during harvest for a free pitting day. People can bring up to two buckets of cherries to be pitted, and seeing the machine operate is pretty cool in itself, he said.

"It's almost got a musical sound when it runs," Godan said. "We held [the free pitting day] in Ronan last year and didn't get a huge turnout. We hope to have the day at the Yellow Bay Clubhouse this year, where we are more centrally located to orchards, which could help."

The day was filled with optimism and hope, as the season has a huge impact on the area's economy. And with the sun shining and the bees buzzing and the smell of cherry blossoms in the air, it's hard not to imagine a big bowl of beautiful, ripe cherries.