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Alonso Quirarte, a cherry picker from Yakima, Washington, dumps a bucket of freshly picked Flathead cherries into a crate at Gateway Orchard on July 29. Quirarte, 70, has now been picking cherries and harvesting other types of produce for more than 50 years after moving to the U.S. from Jalisco, Mexico when he was 19.
Jim Engelsberger is the owner of Gateway Orchard, which was first purchased by his family in 1978. Engelsberger said this will be his last harvesting season at the orchard.
Quirarte works under the hot summer sun at Gateway Orchard. He said it takes him around 15 minutes to pick an entire cherry tree.
A bunch of plump Flathead cherries hang from a tree at the Gateway Orchard. Harvesting season began last week at the orchard. This year’s cherries will be used to make the famous cherry bear claw pastries.
Engelsberger provided on-site housing for Quirarte at the orchard’s rustic cabin.
Quirarte positions and sets up his ladder beneath a cherry tree at Gateway Orchard. Every day pickers like Quirarte have to climb 10-foot ladders in order to handpick all the nooks and crannies of cherry trees. Quirarte said he usually takes his time to set up his ladder before for his own safety.
Higher than average summer temperatures in the Flathead region present arduous work conditions for people like Quirarte, who works hours on end in the hot sun.
An employee of the Polebridge Mercantile holds up one of the Flathead cherry bear claw pastries on July 3, 2022.
Alonso Quirarte, a cherry picker from Yakima, Washington, dumps a bucket of freshly picked Flathead cherries into a crate at Gateway Orchard on July 29. Quirarte, 70, has now been picking cherries and harvesting other types of produce for more than 50 years after moving to the U.S. from Jalisco, Mexico when he was 19.
Jim Engelsberger is the owner of Gateway Orchard, which was first purchased by his family in 1978. Engelsberger said this will be his last harvesting season at the orchard.
Quirarte works under the hot summer sun at Gateway Orchard. He said it takes him around 15 minutes to pick an entire cherry tree.
A bunch of plump Flathead cherries hang from a tree at the Gateway Orchard. Harvesting season began last week at the orchard. This year’s cherries will be used to make the famous cherry bear claw pastries.
Engelsberger provided on-site housing for Quirarte at the orchard’s rustic cabin.
Quirarte positions and sets up his ladder beneath a cherry tree at Gateway Orchard. Every day pickers like Quirarte have to climb 10-foot ladders in order to handpick all the nooks and crannies of cherry trees. Quirarte said he usually takes his time to set up his ladder before for his own safety.
Higher than average summer temperatures in the Flathead region present arduous work conditions for people like Quirarte, who works hours on end in the hot sun.
POLSON, MISSOULA and POLEBRIDGE — The famous sweet-and-juicy Flathead cherries form the epicenter of a partnership between three different businesses in western Montana, and the final result of their cooperation is a sweet treat that delights visitors to the remote Polebridge Mercantile on the border of Glacier National Park.
Gateway Orchard near Polson, which has been in operation for nearly a century and has been owned by the same family since the late ‘70s, begins the process. They do the hard work of growing their famous Lambert cherries, despite constant headaches like an historically cold spring this year, fruit-loving bears, worker shortages, hail, wildfires and slim profit margins.
After the harvest by migrant pickers who brave the heat and smoke in the summer, the crimson-hued, tasty fruit is shipped to the nonprofit Western Montana Growers Cooperative in Missoula, which works with a food processing facility in Ronan. The cherries are pitted and frozen in order to retain their freshness.
Next, the fruit gets trucked to the historic Polebridge Mercantile, where owner Will Hammerquist and his bakers use them for their Flathead cherry bear claw, a pastry almost as popular with tourists and locals as the Merc's famous huckleberry bear claw. (The pastries are shaped to look like the giant paw of a bear, in case you haven't had one.)
It takes a lot of logistics and a lot of work by all three enterprises, but anyone who’s tasted the bear claws or has seen them flying off the shelves at the crowded Mercantile on a hot summer day would agree it’s all worth it.
Jim Engelsberger, who runs Gateway Orchard with his family, grew up on the property and has been growing and picking cherries his entire life.
“We’ve got some of the oldest heritage and traditional cherries that made the valley famous,” he explained. “That’s what Will (Hammerquist) likes. That old-time flavor. That’s what we’ve got here, because we’ve got really good soil.”
Engelsberger said this spring was probably the coldest they’ve had in 100 years, which means his trees have less than half the fruit they normally would. Also, they ripened much later than usual. But a freeze that took out cherries in Washington this spring means that Flathead cherries will be coveted, and thus fetch a higher price, this year.
“We take every day as it comes and try to just make tentative plans, especially in Montana,” Engelsberger explained. “Like my dad used to say, there’s always next year’s harvest.”
On Friday, he began his harvest for the year, with a single cherry-picker working for him on the first day.
Dressed in a hoodie, light blue jeans, tan boots and a white bucket strapped around his torso, Alonso Quirarte, a seasonal worker from Yakima, Washington, picked away at a cherry tree atop a 10-foot ladder.
Despite record-high temperatures across northwestern Montana, the blistering heat didn’t deter Quirarte, 70, from being able to do his job.
“In Washington it gets a lot warmer than here,” Quirarte said. “Lately the temperatures have been very high over there. Water on site is mandatory when you’re working this job.”
Quirarte makes a living picking cherries at various orchards and farms in the Flathead region during the summer months. When it’s not cherry-picking season in Montana, he’s harvesting other types of produce such as apples, strawberries and berries across the West, mostly in his now-home state of Washington.
After immigrating to California from Jalisco, Mexico, with his father when he was 19, working in the fields has been a big part of Quirarte’s life for the last 50 years, he said.
During most of that time he would hitch rides on trains from California that would take him and other seasonal workers to northwestern Montana, particularly the Flathead region, to work in the fields.
“I love my job when the harvest is good because you get paid more,” Quirarte said. “ I came (to the U.S.) because I needed to find work. Field work was something I took up quickly when I got to California.”
Quirarte said he can normally pick an entire cherry tree in about 10 to 15 minutes, which he says is slower than the average younger picker.
“There’s folks who are way faster than I am,” he said. “My friend Martin, who for me is one of the best pickers I know, can pick around 98 boxes of cherries by 2 in the afternoon. That’s almost $700! People like him are one in a million.”
Quirarte said the younger generations and people who move to the country continue to take on picking and harvesting jobs like his in order to make a living. He said that while there’s fruit and vegetables to be picked, there will always be folks who are ready to work in the fields.
It’s uncommon to see other Americans doing jobs like Quirarte’s, which usually brings low pay, no benefits and requires long hours of working in the sun and physical labor for hours on end.
According to reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Labor, 73% of all agricultural workers were foreign-born, with 69% being from Mexico-Central America and 27% from the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The report also shows that the average age of agricultural workers has increased since 2000.
Quirarte said this year’s cherry season has not been great. The amount of ripe cherries was much smaller than last year, he said.
“It’s a scarce (cherry) year, but you have to pick what you can to make a living,” he said.
Depending on what price he can get for the cherries, Englesberger can pay a picker between $7 and $10 for every roughly 20-pound box of cherries picked, and some pickers can pick several boxes per hour.
“He can outwork a lot of 20-year-old guys,” Engelsberger said of Quirarte. “His generation’s passing away, unfortunately, and I don’t know what America’s going to do. A lot of people don’t realize when they’re in the store who’s picking their fresh fruit and all the labor that goes into it.”
Getting cherries picked in time isn't the only challenge.
Bears are a constant threat to eat their fill of cherries for free at the orchard, because they’re extremely smart and can figure out ways to get past the electric fence.
“I had to kick a mama and her cubs out the other day because they were eating too many cherries,” he said. He thinks they either tested the fence when it shorted out or climbed a tree and dropped off a branch to get over the wires.
An employee of the Polebridge Mercantile holds up one of the Flathead cherry bear claw pastries on July 3, 2022.
Still, he’ll be able to send between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of his cherries off to be frozen for the bakers at the Polebridge Mercantile. Hammerquist said customers can’t get enough of the pastries.
Over the Fourth of July weekend this year, visitors from all over the world lined up from early morning till evening to snag the pastries and stock up on coffee and other snacks.
A pastry isn't just a pastry in Polebridge. The Mercantile is about an hour's drive north on a mostly-gravel road from Columbia Falls, and people are often worn out and hungry from a day of hiking or paddling by the time they saunter into the Mercantile. Many an eye has lit up at the sight of a fresh bear claw, frosted on top with a few chocolate chips, being laid out on the counter.
They've been very popular, Hammerquist said.
In their little bakery, they churn out several thousand a week to keep up with demand.
Hopefully, all the customers who bite into the flavorful treats will appreciate all the hard work it took to get it there.
The 2022 NW Montana Fair and Rodeo is on! The fair runs August 17th through the 21st at the Flathead County Fairgrounds.
Enter for your chance to win. Eight (8) winners will be picked at random on Friday, August 26th. Two winners will each win a pair of tickets (2 tickets to each winner) to the Saturday Rodeo. Two winners will each win a pair of tickets (2 tickets to each winner) to the Sunday afternoon Rodeo.…
Nominate someone you think has earned a $100 Bridger Bubbles Car Wash gift certificate!
Originally published on missoulian.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.
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