Cherry harvest reaches 4 million pounds

This year's Flathead Lake cherry harvest surpassed expectations.

The crop picked in Flathead Lake Cherry Growers orchards and shipped from the cooperative's Finley Point warehouse weighed in at 4 million pounds, a half-million pounds more than projected.

The growers cooperative announced the final harvest results Monday. The bountiful crop came in despite an unusually early season, a tornado on Flathead Lake and extreme heat.

In an average year, the cooperative ships 2.7 million to 3 million pounds.

But in late July, just a week or so before picking was expected to come to an end, co-op president Dale Nelson had forecast the harvest at 3.5 million pounds.

"It was only an estimate … we'd rather guess on the light side," Nelson said Monday.

Although growers had "a lot of things going against us," Nelson said, the strong harvest resulted from "healthy trees going into the hard weather conditions. People started irrigating earlier this year, people were fertilizing earlier - just better horticulture."

The actual harvest of 4 million pounds amounted to a gross packed value of more than $4.9 million, a cooperative press release reported.

All the cooperative's cherries are shipped to Monson Fruit Co. in Washington for packing, then distributed nationally through Domex Marketing.

The Flathead Lake Cherry Growers this year worked with Domex to set up three new test markets, in part, Nelson said, as an attempt to get out of the regular commodities market.

Working with Acme Fruit Pennsylvania, Domex and the growers cooperative are offering a free trip to Montana for a family of four. Not only will it appeal to Pennsylvanians interested in visiting Montana, Nelson said, but it will raise East-Coast awareness that Washington is not the only Pacific Northwest state to produce fruit.

"Montana cherries are a more unique buying" experience, he said.

Domex and the growers cooperative also established test markets in Montana through Costco and Safeway, two national chains that Nelson said are looking to have a more regional identity.

"If they have Montana cherries for sale, it makes them seem like they are more local than just a national company," he said.

The test markets are designed to set up good relations with retailers, Nelson said, and to pre-sell the cherries to a group of buyers.

"You're stepping out of that commodities risk somewhat … We're seeing how the idea works. If we can make it work a couple years in a row," he said, it could be a marketing success story to help them work with more retailers in the future.

The same goes for Costco Montana and Safeway Montana, he said.

"It could be a presale thing, too, if it goes well for them."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com