Flathead cherry harvest running late

Running late is almost always a bad thing — unless you’re a cherry farmer on Flathead Lake, that is.

For Flathead cherry growers, timing is a key factor in a successful, profitable season.

With this year’s harvest running almost three weeks later than normal, it’s shaping up to be a decent year for cherry growers around Flathead Lake.

“Late is good for us,” said Dale Nelson, who is the president of the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers. “In the cherry business, you either want to be the first guy to have fruit or the last guy.”

The Montana cherry harvest will still begin after the Washington harvest, which is also running late this year. That timeline is ideal for Flathead growers, whose fruit will be the last to hit the market in North America.

According to Nelson, this year’s cherry crop will be the latest in at least 15 years. He attributed the delay to an unseasonably long, cold spring.

“That (the weather) kind of threw everything out of whack,” Nelson said.

Nelson guessed that none of the Flathead Lake orchards would begin picking fruit before July 30, with the majority beginning around Aug. 7 or Aug. 8.

“We have some people who won’t even begin picking until August 12 through the 15,” Nelson said, adding that most years, the harvest is usually wrapped up by Aug. 10.

Traditionally, the orchards located farther south are the first to begin picking.

“It (harvest time) progresses north as the fruit ripens,” Nelson said.

Cherries grown in or near Polson are usually the first to ripen, followed by those in Finley Point, Blue Bay, Yellow Bay and Woods Bay. Orchards on the West Shore follow the same south-to-north progression, Nelson said.

Heidi Johnson, who owns The Orchard at Flathead Lake in Yellow Bay, said the harvest time at her orchard likely wouldn’t begin until the end of the first week of August.

“We usually have one orchard that we begin picking right around now,” Johnson said.

Although growers anticipated a heavy crop at the beginning of the year, Nelson predicted that the total weight would probably come in just short of 2 million pounds, compared to a yearly average of about 2.5 million pounds. Last year, Flathead cherry growers delivered about 2.7 million pounds to the processing plant.

The lighter-than-predicted crop is largely due to the large volume of fruit lost during the June drop, in which cherries that have not been pollinated fall off of the trees.

Johnson said her Lambert cherries were noticeably affected by the drop, but the other tree varieties were, for the most part, well pollinated.

“We had been concerned about how cold it was during blossom (time), but we ended up having a nice stretch of warm weather there, so the bees did get the job done,” she said. “I think (the harvest) will be kind of average.”

Despite the lighter crop, most orchards will still generate a fair profit due to the large size of the cherries. When the fruit is bigger, it is worth more per pound, Nelson said.

“Usually when the crop is a little lighter, the cherries are bigger, so it kind of evens out,” he said. “We should have some nice, big, crunchy cherries this year.”