Nelson family continues cherry-stand tradition

The Nelson cherry stand above Blue Bay is the color of a ripe Dixon melon. The venerable stand has always been some shade of orange; and it started life as the Pinkerman cherry stand, when Kari Nelson’s grandparents, Karl and Violet Pinkerman, ran the stand.

“My grandfather drove the schoolbus,” Kari said, and she believes he may have had extra orange paint from touching up buses, and decided to paint the stand orange because it was a nice bright color.

The Pinkermans bought the cherry orchard in 1939 and moved here from Anaconda in 1941.

“Andaconda,” Kari’s husband Mike quipped, because that’s how Kari’s grandfather pronounced his hometown.

Kari’s dad was a school teacher in Hardin so the family lived there during the fall and winter and summered on Flathead Lake. Then, Aunt Viola Lewis, who married Kari’s mother’s brother, and her husband, Escoe, were in charge of the cherry orchard and stand.

“And now we’ve got it,” Kari said, so it’s been in the family a long time.

Kari is womaning the stand with help from the couple’s Small Munsterlander, Speck, while Mike goes to town for supplies.

“We’re old school,” Kari said, explaining that the couple raises Lambert cherries, which the local cherry growers’ association does not accept. So they have to find their own market. They also don’t want to plant new cherry trees.

Mike said their pesticide bill went up this year by $2,000, but they like growing cherries.

Before her time, Kari said there was a cherry packing plant in Polson and one in Kalispell, and when she was a child, she remembers when there were two packing plants on Finley Point.

This year the cherries are plentiful and tasty, and Kari has plans to frame some old-time pictures to decorate the orange cherry stand, and keep it all in the family for generations to come.