"FLATHEAD LAKE — The famous Flathead cherry crop in western Montana got almost completely wiped out this year by a hard freeze in January, which one longtime grower called the worst she’s seen in a quarter century.
Large and small cherry orchards dot the landscape along Flathead Lake, mainly on the east side, because the lake’s enormous volume of water usually moderates the temperature enough to allow the delicate cherrybuds to thrive during the Montana winters. "
"Each year, Flathead Lake growers produce between 2 million and 3 million pounds of the fruit. The Flathead cherries are valuable because they usually come later in the season than the huge crops from Washington and other places, meaning customers will pay a premium for those fresh cherries into late July and August.
But the mid-January freeze this year means there will be no millions of pounds, and probably not even thousands of pounds, of cherries."
@marknmt that sucks. I’m not as wise as you, but I have a few years myself. Twice I have had cherries from the south end of the lake and they were huge and fabulous. As mentioned our Canadian crop is poor as well. So I’ve been hoovering up California cherries because that may be all we get. So mostly nothing special. But, I did eat one bag out of Lodi California with a variety name on it. How often does that happen? It was Bing and I quite enjoyed them.
