Flathead Cherry Growers
Great Northern Railr, public domain / Wikimedia Commons.
Drive Montana Highway 35 between Polson and Bigfork in late July and the roadside stands are hard to miss. The orchards on the east shore of Flathead Lake grow most of the sweet cherries sold under the Flathead name, and the season is short: in a normal year, picking runs about three weeks, from the last part of July into August.
The lake is the reason the fruit grows this far north at all. A body of water that size stores heat through the summer and releases it in fall and spring, which softens the frosts that would otherwise kill blossoms on the hillsides. Growers plant on the slopes above the water, where cold air drains away rather than settling.
Lamberts were the traditional variety on the east shore. Many orchards have added Rainiers, Lapins and Skeena trees over the years to spread out the harvest and reduce the risk of losing the whole crop to one rainstorm. Rain right before picking is the worst case: ripe cherries soak up water through the skin and split.
Packing the crop
For decades, a large share of the commercial crop has gone through the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers cooperative, whose warehouse and loading docks near Polson have been documented by the Historic American Engineering Record. The co-op model lets small family orchards share sorting, cooling and shipping that none of them could afford alone. Fruit that does not go to the co-op ends up at the roadside stands, U-pick operations and farmers markets in Missoula, Kalispell and Whitefish.
Labor is the constant pressure. Cherries are picked by hand, and growers compete for crews in the same weeks that other Northwest orchards are harvesting.
For buyers, the simplest advice is the one growers repeat every year: Flathead cherries are only fresh for a few weeks, and stands sell out early in years when the crop is light.