By Greg Breining, All About Birds, June 25, 2021
Jim Nugent grows cherries on his 40-acre orchard in Michigan’s Leelanau County, an idyllic peninsula of dunes and tree-covered hills jutting into vast blue Lake Michigan. The surrounding water moderates the worst of the frigid winters here, and the rolling topography drains cold air from the upland orchards. Cherries thrive in the sandy soil.
“The fruit belt in Michigan is pretty tight to the coastline of Lake Michigan,” says Nugent. In that limited geography grow nearly half the U.S. production of tart cherries, and quite a few sweet cherries, too.
Despite ideal growing conditions, the cherry orchards here are beset by pests—a plethora of insects; deer mice and voles that gnaw the bark and roots of fruit trees; and flocks of fruit-eating birds that swoop into orchards, especially as sweet cherries ripen in early July.
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