Northern Michigan With Cherries?

“How many cherries do you think you can fit in your mouth?”  I asked, provokingly.

“More than you,” Jack, my younger brother, sneered back.  He was notorious for his big mouth. 

We were standing between rows of a cherry orchard in Frankfort, Michigan.   My mom dragged us out of Crystal Lake, into the car and out to North Star Organics cherry orchard for a family outing.  While my mother was away filling up her gallon milk jug of cherries, Jack and I were standing under Montmorency tart cherry trees with our empty gallons by our feet.  I reached up in a bunch of cherries, picked the stems off and started popping them in my mouth – one, two, three, four, five.  Jack looked at me and started in on his own bunch.  The first twenty were easy.  I guess we both have really big mouths.  By number twenty-five, we were bending over drooling with my rest of my family circled around us, half cheering, half scolding but mostly disgusted.  By number twenty-eight, I was tucking each cherry into my lips being careful not to choke.  Twenty-nine.  Thirty.  I started laughing.  Jack was still on twenty-five.  I managed to fit a thirty-first cherry in.  Jack fit in his twenty-sixth.  We were both laughing and drooling.  I reached up for another cherry, blindly.  If I stood up I would choke.  I couldn’t stop giggling.  Jack started laughing, too.  I watched him pull back his lip and tuck the twenty-seventh cherry in.  He started laughing and coughing and a cherry pie filling came pouring out of his mouth.  I turned away, pushed my thirty- second cherry in, put my hands over my head like a champion and spit all my cherries out, too.

But this year we wouldn’t dare waste cherries.  In fact, there aren’t enough cherries to waste.  Alan Kobernik, the operator of North Star Organics, reported their cherry harvest is going to be “terrible.”  He continues saying, “There’s really no other world.  There’s pretty much no crop.”  He estimates that he will get about 1 lb of fruit per tree.  He explains it to be the weather: “The 80-degree weather in March was not good. “ Then in April, “everything froze.”  This year it will be “almost impossible to buy a cherry at whole sale.” 

While I am personally concerned about my cherry intake this summer, the ravaging cherry crop has more impact than the absence of cherry related contests.  Everyone can “eat something else” but, “it’s financial,” Kobernik says.  There will be a large impact “for our area.”  Kobernik continues to list the devastation:  “the migrant help – there will be nothing for them to do.  We’re not spending.  All the businesses here aren’t getting that money.” 

The negative economic impact on local community members and family businesses has the potential to be vast.  Some businesses in Northern Michigan depend on the cherry.  The Cherry Hut is one of these businesses and is located just one town over from North Star Organics.   The Cherry Hut opened as a cherry pie stand in 1922 on the north shore of Crystal Lake.  The stand sold pies, jams, and jellies, all family recipes.  In 1935 it moved to its present day location in on highway 31, a two-lane winding road that follows lake Michigan all the way up the Lower Peninsula.  As a car passes though Beulah, the Cherry Hut’s iconic Jerry Cherry “the smiling pie faced boy” welcomes you to the red and white painted building.  Everything is red and white, the awnings over of the outdoor seating, the flowers baskets hanging out side and the vintage style uniform of the servers.  A red and white decoration aside, the business depends on cherries.  The menu features cherry pies, cherry burgers, cherry chicken salad, cherryade, and cherry frozen yogurt.  Andy Case, the owner, estimates the cherry hut uses about 3000 lbs of cherries a week, baking more than 30,000 pies a year.

This year the cherries we stuffed into our mouths and into Cherry Hut pies are in jeopardy.  Karl Henkel of the Detroit News reported, “80 percent of its tart cherry crop is rippling through Michigan.”  The March warm spell caused fruit trees to blossom early, but early blossoms froze as temperature fluctuated.  It the Montmorency tart cherries that the Cherry Hut needs, that are predicted to yield 20 percent of their regular yield.  They are perfect for pies and cherry mouth-stuffing contests because of their tart flavor and they are a little bit smaller than the sweet cherries.

“It’s going to be challenging this year,” says Case.  “We have enough in our own inventory to get us through June,” he said reassuringly.  All of the Cherry Hut’s cherries are local.  “They’re all Benzie, Leelanau, and Grand Traverse cherries,” Case said naming off local counties.  He agreed that the relationship-based cherry purchasing protects his business.  “We’ve been doing business for local families for so long.  We got a call last week” from a local cherry orchard “that said they would assure us cherries for the rest of our season.”   He added that the “smaller-scale” of the Cherry Hut and the “history helps us out.”

The Cherry Hut might be safe this year but Kobernik, of North Star Organics states, “I think things in the fruit business are going to change.  If this is normal,” he says referring to the weather, “it’s not going to be reliable.”  Kobernik reflects on the problem at hand saying, “We can live without cherries,” but I ask what would that mean for my mouth-stuffing title?