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Late Harvest for an Expanding Market

By Beacon Staff

There wasn’t much else to do but wait.

Louise Swanberg’s family has been harvesting Flathead Valley cherries for a half century and 2011 has been one of the latest seasons she has ever seen, thanks to a cold winter and unseasonably cool spring and summer. This has resulted in the annual cherry harvest beginning 10 to 14 days late in the Flathead Valley. Usually cherries are being picked by late July.

“I thought last year was my latest ever, but this year has beat it,” said Swanberg, who owns an orchard in Lakeside.

On the other side of the lake, Mark St. Sauver said it’s the latest year he’s seen in 35 years of growing cherries on his seven-acre orchard in Yellow Bay. But he’s not worried.

“It is later, but the packer still wants the fruit and there is still a market for it,” he said. “Eventually they’ll get ripe and we’ll be picking them.”

And according to Ken Engington, a board member for Flathead Lake Cherry Growers Inc., that market will be expanding once the cherries start coming off the trees.

Engington said the cherry growers cooperative includes about 100 orchards and in the past it’s worked exclusively with Monson Fruit Company and Domex Inc., based in Washington, to package and distribute the product. Engington said the relationship has been great and the only negative was Domex Inc. couldn’t distribute the cherries to smaller, regional stores because of the large quantities the distributor sells. While stores such as Costco and Walmart can sell an entire truckload of Montana-grown cherries in a week, most smaller stores can’t.

Now the cooperative is also working with Charlie’s Produce out of Spokane, which can distribute smaller quantities to smaller stores, specifically in Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming.

“We like to see any of our fruit getting sold, but we love to see it sold to locals,” Engington said, addeding that in the past many people were disappointed they couldn’t go to their local grocery and get cherries grown in their own state. “We have the system in place that makes sure that when it arrives at the small stores, it looks just as good as when it’s at the big store,” he said.

At his orchard, Engington’s cherries are usually picked early in the morning and by midday he has a truckload sent to the cooperative’s facility near Finley Point, north of Polson. Once it arrives, the cherries are given a cold wash and then refrigerated, before being loaded on a refrigerator truck headed to Washington for packaging.

“It’s a really fast operation. From the time the cherry leaves the tree in the Flathead Valley to when it arrives at the store, it could be as few as four days,” he said.

But before Flathead cherries can hit store shelves they have to be picked, something that may finally begin late this week or early next.

Swanberg said the late harvest isn’t a concern because cherry growers in Washington, Montana growers’ primary competition, experienced the same delay. She did worry however that the late harvest could affect her roadside sales, which cater to area visitors.

“The longer you wait, the more tourists you lose,” she said.

But Engington said waiting a few more days could also be a good thing. The longer the cherries stay on the tree, the more sugar they’ll develop, which could mean a sweeter product.

“They could be bigger and better this year,” he said. “Right now we’re all just sitting tight, watching the cherries do their thing.”