Page 10 - Flathead Beacon // 6.15.16

NEWS
Cherry Crop is Early, Robust
Though the sweet Flathead cherries are ahead of schedule, farmers expect a big and healthy July harvest
BY CLARE MENZEL OF THE BEACON
This April, in the absence of rainstorms, storms of bees descended on cherry orchards around Flathead Lake to pollenize trees 10 days early.
“They’re kind of fair weather yers, and we had ve or six straight days of perfect weather for them, so they were just going crazy,” said Bruce Johnson, president of the Flathead Lake Cherry Growers Association. “I think they pollenized everything.”
Now, as the rst heat waves of summer roll through, the fruit of their labor is emerging. Johnson predicts that the harvest will peak in early, rather than late, July this year.
“We’ve got a lot a lot of green cherries right now, a lot of green cherries,” he said.
By Johnson’s estimation, 2015’s short crop, which was early by 10 to 14 days, yielded just 30 to 40 percent of the normal harvest. This summer, though, he expects the cherry orchards to put on a big, red show.
“We have a way better crop than last year,” Johnson said, also carefully noting that it’s early in the season and “things can still change.”
Though farmers in Washington, Oregon, and Cali- fornia produce the bulk of the nation’s cherries, their crop historically ripens early and Flathead cherries
The morning sunlight shines through a grouping of Lapin cherries at Glacier Fresh Orchards on the east side of Flathead Lake. BEACON FILE PHOTO
ll supermarket shelves late in the season. Johnson is assured that the Northwest saw enough early growth to push the entire region’s growing schedule forward,
meaning Flathead farmers still won’t have to compete with the glut of early-season produce.
The biggest challenge with timing as of yet is for Gary and Susan Snow, of Tabletree Enterprises, an award-winning Canadian juicing operation that makes use of culled, or unwanted, cherries. The husband- and-wife team, who worked for two decades on Susan’s family cherry farm in British Columbia before estab- lishing Tabletree in 2010, had planned to open a pro- cessing center this summer in a Flathead Lake Cherry Growers Association facility at Finley Point. But the 6,000-square-foot building, which the Snows share with local farmers, needed to be retro tted for food pro- cessing, and construction isn’t yet complete.
“All hell’s going to break loose when they harvest,” Gary Snow said. “It wouldn’t be compatible for people trying to do harvest and construction, going in and out the same doors. We just ran out of time.”
So the Snows are putting construction on hold until the window between cherry and apple harvests. In the meantime, they will juice summer produce at the Mis- sion Mountain Food Enterprise Center, a food process- ing, research, and development facility in Ronan.
“You can never plan. [The harvest] happens when it wants to, not when it’s convenient for you,” Gary said.
clare@ atheadbeacon.com
Law Enforcement Sees Sharp Increase of Meth in the Flathead Sheri ’s o ce has con scated as much meth in 2016 as it did all last year
BY JUSTIN FRANZ OF THE BEACON
The Flathead County Sheri ’s O ce
and the Northwest Montana Drug Task Force have con scated as much metham- phetamine in the rst ve months of 2016 as it did all last year.
Local law enforcement o cials say the spike in con scated methamphet- amine exempli es a rise in the drug’s use across the Flathead Valley and Montana.
“Meth has taken over,” said Shane Haberlock, a regional narcotics agent with the Montana Department of Jus- tice. “It’s much worse now than what it
was in the mid-2000s ... and what we’re con scating is only a percentage of what is out there.”
Haberlock said a decade ago – when meth use was so prevalent in the state that the Montana Meth Project was launched to reduce its use – lawmen would frequently con scate the drug by the ounce. Today they’re often taking it in by the pound.
Flathead County Sheri Chuck Curry said the Northwest Montana Drug Task Force con scated 9 pounds of meth in 2014 and 15 pounds in 2015. This year there was a sudden spike and, from January until the
end of the May, law enforcement con s- cated 15 pounds of meth.
Curry said at current prices, the task force has con scated $288,000 worth of meth so far in 2016. He said much of what has come in stems from a handful of large drug busts.
Curry said unlike a decade ago, when most of the methamphetamine was locally produced, much of what they see now comes from other countries. That’s because the state has made it harder to buy the ingredients needed to make the drug.
The continued increase in drug use has also resulted in a spike in theft in the
valley, Curry said.
“Being an addict is expensive and a
lot of people don’t have six- gure jobs to maintain their habit so they turn to prop- erty crime,” Curry said.
Despite the continued use of meth across the state, organizers of the non- pro t Montana Meth Project have said it is still successful in convincing young people not to use the drug. Last year, Montana Meth Project Executive Direc- tor Amy Rue said since it launched in 2005 teen meth use has dropped by 63 percent in the state.
jfranz@ atheadbeacon.com
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JUNE 15, 2016 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM