Cherry Festival has ripe history

Polson’s annual Cherry Festival started with an idea from downtown business owner, Jackie Cripe, who wanted to showcase the gorgeous small-town atmosphere of Polson and the quaint downtown storefronts she knew tourists loved to visit.

Cripe, owner of Jackie M’s Shoe Store, founded the first annual festival that was renamed the Polson Main Street Cherry Festival in 1999, she said. It was her way of hosting a big party in downtown Polson that would stimulate activity and business in the area without costing local business owners to produce it.

“We wanted to have something that drew a lot of people and made them more aware of Polson,” she said.

Cripe’s idea was genius, and it opened the door for the annual Cherry Festival to become one of Polson’s signature events. This year’s festival will be July 16 and 17.

Cripe’s early festivals lined downtown businesses with a variety of vendors, drew massive crowds, and over time, Cripe said, became known as one of the largest festivals in Montana.

“We’ve had up to 8,000 people attend before,” she said.

Though Flathead Lake Cherry Growers’ Association members now participate heavily in the annual event, its members were not part of the festival until 2002 when Association members approached Cripe about joining, Cripe said.

The Growers wanted to be a part of the festival to celebrate the beginning of Flathead cherry harvesting season, and to offer area growers a chance to display and sell “all things cherry,” something Cripe said branches off in a variety of ways.

“Agritourism was just coming into popularity,” she said. And Cripe knew that folding the area’s famous cherry growers into the mix was the perfect opportunity to expand.

Since Flathead cherry growers specialize in a variety of cherries, participants can buy several kinds of cherries straight from the farmer’s truck at the event.

Cripe said the festival features more than 100 vendor booths representing a range of products.

Organizers drew 125 vendors in the festival’s biggest year. This year, Cripe expects about 110 vendors to participate.

But as far as cherries are concerned, only Flathead cherries and cherry products are available.

Vendors participate for a fee, and that fee is collected and used to run the annual event as well as provide for a variety of additional downtown business-related items during the year.

Through the years, festival fees were used to pay for downtown business gift certificate Christmas drawings, trees, benches, bike racks and a mural proudly displayed on the exterior wall of the Lake City Bakery, she said.

Some of her vendors started participating in the Cherry Festival its first year, and never ceased. Others are newer to the event.

In addition to creating what some say is the town’s premier event of the summer, Cripe’s idea also spurred other area organizations to participate.

In the past, members of the Yellow Bay Ladies’ Auxiliary and the Montecahto Club combined each year and made fresh cherry pies to sell at the event. Money raised goes to each group’s own outreach projects.

Baked at Polson’s Lake City Bakery along Highway 93, volunteers from the Montecahto Club spend three pre-event days feverishly working to prepare fresh pies.

In past years, Yellow Bay Ladies’ Auxiliary members baked their pies in Yellow Bay and arrive on event day with their offerings. Montecahto Club ladies baked their pies in several Polson commercial kitchens.

This year, Yellow Bay Ladies’ Auxiliary members won’t be offering pies. Instead they will sell cherry lemonade as a fundraiser.

The 50-member Montecahto Club will make pies and expect to have about 150 for sale.

But the process of making those pies a reality is a painstaking job.

Doreen Ratzburg, Montecahto Club treasurer said the process is worth it.

“It’s a wonderful fundraiser for the non profit club,” she said. “It takes about 15 people over the course of between three- to five- days to get the pies made.”

Ratzburg said the group of ladies involved, do their work at several Lake County locations.

Cherries are processed and pitted at the Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center kitchen in Ronan.

Filling is processed at the journeyBe soup kitchen in Polson. The laborious work of mixing, rolling, preparing and baking the pies is done at Lake City Bakery in Polson.

“The majority is done at the bakery,” Ratzburg said. “It is where we mix the pastry, roll the crust, fill and bake pies. It gets to be a lot of fun and it presents really good bonding situations.”

Montecahto Club member Alice Erb heads up the pie baking effort.

“It’s three days in a row with a lot of work,” Erb said. “The bakery is the most civic-minded business in town. They move their bread and donuts and stuff, and we make our pies.”

Club members produce about 150 pies for sale and added a new item to this year’s offerings: Hand pies.

Erb said that hand pies offer a delicious individual serving of cherry pie that fans can eat right away.

“You can come by our booth and eat it as you are walking down the street,” she said.

Once pies are finished, Erb said the group uses the commercial refrigerators at the Polson VFW to store their product until event day.

But if you want a pie, you better move fast, she said. Pies are usually sold out by the end of the first day.

Cherry Festival visitors can find several themed contests at the fair that include a Cherry Pie Eating Contest, a Cherry Pit-Spitting Contest, a Stem Tying Contest and a Cherry Cooking Contest during the two-day event.

This year’s festival organizer is Marylyn Frame.

Four additional non-Cherry Festival events will take place July 17 in Polson.

The Third Annual Polson Mud Run, is a fundraiser 5k obstacle course event and will benefit the Boys and Girls Club.

The Miracle of America Museum will host its annual Live History Days and Anderson Broadcasting will present a free summer concert.