Dig even deeper into the biggest stories of the last seven days with the Beacon’s weekly podcast.
This week:
Montana is home to a number of heritage apple orchards that have been producing fruit for decades, even going back to the early 1900s. Many of the oldest orchards are remnants of old homesteads when trees were planted for sustenance, while some go back to early commercial operations.
The Kalispell orchard planted by Rod McIver is only 23 years old, but is the largest collection of apple varieties in the state. Rod started his home orchard project in 1997 to feed his love for gardening and the natural world and he operates it as part experiment, part commercial operation, with the dual purposes of searching for apple varieties that thrive in Montana’s climate and selling trees to the public to offer the every day fruit consumer a wider variety of fresh options.
Host Micah Drew spent hours at the orchard over the past weeks and recorded parts of his conversations with McIver who talked about his favorite fruits and some of the history of his project.
Later, Micah runs through the biggest stories from the last seven days, including a new conservation project near Bigfork, updates on Flathead County’s COVID-19 stats, the results from the state golf tournaments and more.
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The music in this episode is “Thinking Music” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) and is licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.