This morning Brian and I went cherry picking. The Flathead cherries are in the middle of harvest now. There is a dispute between neighbors down on Finley Point over a right-of-way road they share, and the cherry orchard owner decided to give his cherries away free as he claims he can't get a semi truck into his orchard to haul the cherries away.
Here is a link to the newspaper article about the dispute.
Today was the first day of picking. Joyce had called and found out the start time was 7 am. She and her daughter planned on going to pick cherries but then changed their mind due to the distance (Finley Point is near the south end of Flathead Lake) and Joyce had hurt her back picking huckleberries the day before.
As you know I am not an early person, and Brian wanted to sleep in to recover from his 650 mile drive from Wyoming the previous day. Therefore we didn't arrive at the orchard until after 10 am. A number of cars were lining the road outside the orchard and people were carrying boxes full of cherries to their cars.
As we walked up the steep gravel road, Brian, the cherry orchard owner was there and introduced himself. He wanted to know first names and said he would be interested in how many pounds of cherries we would harvest. He also asked if we thought the road would allow a semi truck to be driven on it. I don't think I gave the right answer as I initially said the road wasn't in as bad of condition as I imagined as I remembered the photo in the newspaper article. Note: the online version of the newspaper article doesn't have the photo of a tractor mired int he gravel road.
Brian the orchard owner was excited to meet my friend Brian as they shared the same name, and the same spelling of their name.
In the orchard were dozens of people swarming around cherry trees. I don't know how many trees he had, but well over 100 trees. The first thing I noticed were all the people with ladders. Darn! I remembered pails to hold the cherries, but I didn't think of a ladder. Duh!
We noticed the "low hanging" fruit had been picked. Higher up in the trees were lots of cherries. Hmmmm.....We wandered into the middle of the orchard in hopes of finding trees not picked. We found a few trees where we could reach some cherries as we are 6 ft tall. Soon we climbed into several trees in search of hand fulls of cherries.
I had to be careful in the tree as I heard once a branch start to crack. During our cherry picking we heard several branches break in other trees from people standing on them, and saw several more broken branches. I hope the owner doesn't regret letting "amateurs" in to pick cherries.
I don't know how long it was but when I was near done picking what I could reach in my tree a couple in the next tree told us they planned to leave in 15 minutes and I could have their ladder. Ahhh... the orchard provided the ladders. It wasn't that the other people were smart and I was dumb.
A short time after I began using the ladder another person left and Brian got his ladder to use. Ladders made cherry picking so much easier.The ladder is an odd ladder but made sense when trying to get "into" a tree. Instead of two support legs in front, it had a single pole in the middle. This worked good, but one had to be careful when leaning sideways to reach cherries.
The people picking were a variety. In the tree nearby were people from South Dakota talking with local friends. This was new to the South Dakota people as cherry trees don't grow in much, if not all, of South Dakota. I also heard Russian accents from other people. A number families were there picking though the parents enjoyed this more than the kids. "Are we done yet?"
I had two small pails to hold when picking the cherries, then we dumped them into 5 gallon plastic pails. I found out Brian doesn't care to eat cherries so he was doing this cherry pickling to humor me. He also suffers from rheumatoid arthritis so when the two 5 gallon pails were near full he stopped as from the heat he was tired. He sat in the shade while I continued to pick cherries.
I love picking berries, cherries, whatever, and could have gone on for many more hours. I decided to pick more berries to give to my neighbors, Bob and Jan, and also to give to Joyce in hope of trading them for a few huckleberries as it looks like I won't be picking huckleberries this year. Joyce and MaryAnn both have visited the secret site where we scored lots of huckleberries last year and both said this year's crop there was light and they picked them already.
After a while Brian suggested we leave as we had lots of berries and he needed food and water as it was after 1 pm. That late?! My how times flies when I pick berries. I shouldn't be surprised as I remembered spending 8 hours non-stop picking black cap raspberries back in Minnesota many years ago when I found a super patch.
I filled the two 5 gallon pails, a two gallon pail, and a 1 gallon pail, and picked a few dozen yellow cherries into a plastic bag.
By the time we left there were only a few cars left on the road. Some teenagers sitting on the tailgate of a pickup with a topper were munching on food. They has made a line of cherries across one lane of the road, and as Brian and I stepped over the cherries shrieked "Don't step on my cherries!" We didn't.
Before we left a few vehicles drove down the road and over the cherries to the amusement of the kids.
Since we were close to Polson we drove around the end of Flathead Lake to search for a restaurant. We found a Wheat Montana bakery and deli in an old McDonalds building. The kind with a two story end for a kids playland? I don't know as I haven't been inside a McDonalds building since who knows, I don't remember.Wheat Montana is a Montana company having started in Bozemen. I got a "Three Forks" sub sandwich which was very good.
Before we left Polson I got Brain to drive to Kerr Dam at the foot of Flathead Lake. I didn't know how to get there and there were no signs so we drove around the NW side of the lake's end to no avail. Driving on the SE side, and through town, we stumbled on the correct road and a number of left and right turns. We ended up taking the long route to the dam.
The dam is a dam. If you are not into dams, then skip it by. Otherwise it is a small interesting dam. The builders drilled tunnels through the rock to run the water through the turbines. Different because dams usually have the turbines in or next to the dam. Below the dam the river bends from NW to SW and passes where the electricity generating water is discharged. The river is far below the observation deck. the deck is a good hike partway down in the valley.
Below the water discharge is a road and we saw several large rafts being launched for a float downstream.
This area doesn't seem part of the "area" as it is dry and mainly treeless. No wonder the white man let the Indians keep this land as their reservation.
When we reached Kalispell we drove over to Joyce's ranch to give her the 2 gallon pail of cherries. She was surprised to see us but enjoyed receiving the cherries. I was able to trade for some huckleberries for Brian to sample. I go the far better deal, and told Joyce so, as it is hard and time consuming to pick huckleberries. She also gave me two more small jars of the elderberry syrup she made from the elderberries we had picked on the Cobalt lake hike last year. I love this syrup on my pancakes. Joyce is not satisfied with the syrups' taste.
Joyce told me out Siyeh hike that was postponed from last Friday to this Wednesday was canceled because Wednesday's forecast is for a high of 100 degrees.
It rained tonight!!!!! I'll try to write about this night's music concert and the rain another time as I am very tired right now.
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