Three cheers for cherries
<p>Appropriately enough, Polson's Cherry Festival coincided with the start of the 2013 Flathead cherry harvest. Jacie Pruitt of Polson keeps an eye on the competition in the kids' cherry pie eating contest.</p>
POLSON — While most Lake County residents are sick of the continued heat, cherry growers wouldn’t ask for anything else.
The warm days and cool nights with an absence of rain has been nearly perfect weather-wise, Mitch Jones said. Jones, a board member of the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers cooperative (FLCG), said high temperatures would not harm the cherry crops.
The warmer weather has led to an earlier harvest. Some growers brought harvested cherries to the FLCG packing plant on Finley Point last Friday, a week earlier than last year, Jones said.
By the middle of this week, the cherry harvest will be in full swing.
“All systems go,” Jones said. “Everybody will be picking or starting to pick.”
Jones said his orchard, Big Sky Orchards, started picking on Wednesday. When growers begin picking will depend on where the orchard is located. South shore orchards bloom and ripen sooner due to warmer temperatures. Fruit on trees will begin to ripen in succession up the east shore of Flathead Lake.
The early season harvest will last around two weeks. Growers will then have a break to prepare for late season cherries, which will be ripe in mid-August.
These late season crops are fairly new, Jones said. FLCG growers are actively trying to separate themselves from the Washington state sweet cherry market. For the past decade growers have been replanting their orchards with these late season variety trees.
Jones thinks this year’s crop will be a little smaller than last year’s but added it was purely a guess. He said FLCG would not know the exact size of the crops until all of the picking is done.
He said a cold snap during the bloom has led to fewer cherries on the tree, but that the quality was not affected. In fact, they may be better.
“It’s a good year to report,” Jones said. “It’s a good-looking crop.”
Brian Campbell, Monson Fruit Company’s field representative, said volume is down a bit compared to last year, but it is a good quality crop.
Campbell said the warehouse is averaging at 95 percent pack-out, meaning only 5 percent of cherries brought in are being thrown out for being damaged or too small.
The unusual trait about this crop is it all came on at once, Campbell said. Picking for the co-op will be done by the end of July, rather than spanning into the first weeks of August.
Fruit stands will remain open longer than the harvest, but the time is ripe to get Flathead cherries, so get them while it’s hot.