Growers face potential cherry disaster

POLSON – Location made the difference for area cherry orchardists fighting the dreaded outcome of a hard summer rain: Cherry splitting.

Though orchardists were ready for the two rainstorms that rolled through the Flathead Lake area July 20 and 21, the success of blowing rain off precious crops before they split was more effective for orchardists for the north end of the Flathead Lake cherry growers. But local area growers’ crops were closer to harvest and more vulnerable to the monetary loss.

Dutch Orchard, a 10-acre, 1,000-tree cherry orchard above the museum in Polson was about half way through their cherry harvest when the rain hit. Early estimates were that the orchard may have lost up to 20 percent of their harvest due to the rain, so owners Mark and Susan Ewy-Sterkel brought “stand-by” helicopters in to assist drying out.

Helicopters hover about 20-feet above an orchard and allow their downdraft airflow to blow moisture off their fruit trees.

“Our orchard was half harvested Sunday night and the rain stopped us from picking Monday,” Ewy-Sterkel said. “We blew it (the rain) off Sunday and Monday, then blew it off again this morning (Tuesday).”

“You never know when the cherries are going to split from rain,” Ewy-Sterkel said. “Sometimes they split and sometimes they don’t. We try to put different products on the cherries to keep from soaking in rainwater. We also have the helicopter. Our alternative is to lose the entire crop.”

Ewy-Sterkel is part of a collection of area cherry orchardists who ship their fruit to Selah, Wash.

Finley Point orchardist Brian Campbell is a Flathead Cherry Growers’ board member and field man for Monson Fruit Company, a packing facility that collects cherries from Washington, Oregon and Montana and prepares it for worldwide delivery, according to a Monson Fruit website.

“There was some damage to the whole Flathead Montana crop,” Campbell said. “(Damage) varies from orchard to orchard, location to location. Most places it’s not too bad and we are going to be able to harvest as it stands now, the whole crop.”

Campbell said the Flathead Cherry Grower’s Association co-op expects to send about 2 million pounds of cherries to Monson fruit.”

Orchardists build a certain margin for weather damage to fruit trees each season and many of them carry crop insurance to help out when crops are damaged, he said.

“Typically we lose five percent without rain, and now we’re going to have on average of a 15 percent loss,” Campbell said.

Co-op orchardists won’t know exactly how much of their crop was damaged until after it travels through the packing and distribution process.

In Yellow Bay, orchardist and Flathead Cherry Growers’ board member Ken Edgington said he was watching weather radars and thought Yellow Bay took the worst of the weather but did not appear to suffer too much damage.

When Edgington heard the rain hitting his roof, he first thought he was seeing hail, but later realized it was just huge raindrops.

“I can’t speak for the entire east side of the lake but the Yellow Bay area seems to have taken the worst of the weather. We had three helicopters this year on standby and they got into the orchards pretty quick,” he said.

Edgington said orchardists’ cherries ripen at different times depending on where they sit on the lake.

“They may have been further along when they took the rain,” he said. “Their cherries may have been riper.”