Polson man shares history, evolution of cherry business
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While the beauty of Flathead Lake and the Mission Mountains draw many visitors to the area, in late July the sweet cherries ripen and provide another reason to visit.
“The Lambert (cherry) has gone the way of the dinosaur,” Brian Campbell told about 40 people at a Pachyderm meeting.
New varieties such as Skeena, Sweetheart and Lapins are replacing the Lambert. One reason is that Montana’s niche has always been late season cherries, and some of the new varieties ripen later so Monson Fruit Company, who packs local cherries, hopes to have cherries until Labor Day.
To explain more about the ins and outs of raising cherries, Campbell brought his 42 years of cherry business experience to the meeting. Campbell and his family raise cherries on Finley Point, and he is also the local Monson Fruit Company representative.
Campbell gave some history on why the majority of Montana fruit is packed in Washington. Many orchards and trees around Flathead Lake were lost in 1989, the year of “the big freeze.” At that time, the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers had a packing center in Kalispell, where the mall is now located, but they lost the lease and used the Skidoo Bay plant instead. Since replacement trees needed time to grow and mature, there was not much production for a while, Campbell said. When the cherry trees began producing again, the plant was inadequate.
He remembers 100 bins of cherries stacked on the tarmac in 90-degree heat in front of the plant because they could not be processed fast enough.
The Flathead Lake Cherry Growers, about 90 growers with about 600 acres of cherry trees, decided to consult experts, shopped around and chose the Monson Fruit Company, Selah, Wash., which packs 13 percent of the whole Northwest cherry production and is one of the top two cherry packers in the United States.
Monson concentrated on horticulture to improve the quality of the cherries and up the production.
To speed up processing, Monson installed a $100,000 hydro cooler in the Finley Point packing plant. The hydro cooler uses chlorinated, 32-degree water to cool cherries to 40 degrees. The hydro cooler runs four bins of cherries (a bin is 300 pounds of fresh Flathead cherries) every 15 minutes and then they go in the cooler before shipping.
A truckload of cherries is about 100 bins, and at the height of cherry season Munson Fruit runs three trucks to Selah per day, Campbell explained. The fruit goes into cold storage there and sometimes is packed within the hour.
Monson works with marketing agency Domex to sell the fruit. They sell to Costco and Walmart as well as other markets.
The rumor that Monson Fruit does not want Montana cherries is not true, Campbell said, mentioning 2006. That year factors such as a glut of cherries, no ripe Washington cherries by the Fourth of July (normally a huge market weekend), a compressed picking season and no market combined to leave tons of cherries unsold.
As well as weather concerns and the state of the cherry market, fruit flies are a problem for cherry farmers. Local cherry orchardists are controlling these pests with new spray called GF-120 NF. It’s organic, Campbell said, non-toxic to mammals, and growers can apply a squirt of the bait from an ATV. The spray contains molasses so the flies are drawn to the bait. Twelve hours after application, cherries can be picked. The spray must be repeated every seven days, which is the life cycle of the fly.
Sevin, used before GF-120 came around, required a three-day wait before cherries could be picked.
Other spraying is required to protect against fungus and to provide nutrients. People who have just two or three cherry trees also have to spray, Campbell said, and continue spraying all season.
“There is zero tolerance for worms in fruit,” Campbell explained.
A sample of each load of cherries is checked at the packing plant.
“If they find one larvae, they will cut you off,” Campbell noted. “And ask you to come pick up your bins.”
Cherries are also checked at Monson Fruit Company and again by the United States Department of Agriculture.
Another effort to control the fruit fly and to satisfy California buyers so they will buy Montana fruit is a Pest Management Area. FLCG members are assessed a half a cent per pound of cherries picked to pay for a PMA officer. The officer educates people about fruit flies and what spray to use, puts up fruit fly traps, removes feral trees that spring up when someone spits a pit in the bar ditch and checks into abandoned orchards.
When the cherries ripen, pickers arrive to harvest the fruit. Campbell estimated it takes two and a half pickers per acre. With the FLCG’s 600 acres, that figures out to 1,500 workers needed for the two-to-three-week cherry season. Pickers are skilled, trained workers.
Workers pick cherries into a 30-pound lug, for which they are paid $5. It takes 10 lugs to fill a bin, so “a good picker can pick up to 30 lugs per day,” Campbell said. “It’s good money but hard work.”
Before they begin picking, workers fill out an I-9 with two forms of ID, usually a Social Security card and a driver’s license, but it could also be a green card.
This year there are new hoops for workers and growers to jump through. Campbell displayed a 2-inch-thick binder on food safety protocol called Global Gap. The quality control program is enforced by the industry and will be required by Costco and Walmart. Some of the provisions are that workers can’t eat lunch in the orchard; the only liquid allowed workers is a clear plastic bottle of water; and pickers may not wear jewelry when they are working. \
For now rain and cool weather, but not a freeze, are good for the cherries as they blossom.
