Spindrift Organics Orchard and Vineyard

The cherry trees at Spindrift Organics stand under seven feet tall, in rows on flat, mowed grass off Cherrywood Lane near Polson. Pickers walk the rows at their own pace with bags the orchard supplies, take as much fruit as they like, and have it weighed on the way out. No ladders are needed. The orchard says it was planted that way so that every piece of fruit could be reached from the ground. The farm calls the result a pedestrian orchard, and its website names who it was built for: young children, grandparents, families with strollers, and visitors using wheelchairs or walkers.

Dwarf trees on the east shore

The farm sits on the east shore of Flathead Lake in Lake County, just off the road to Glacier. It holds USDA organic certification for both its cherries and its grapes. The cherries are Montmorency tart and Skeena, Sweetheart, and Rainier sweet. The vines carry Marquette for red wine, Frontenac Gris for white, and Jupiter table grapes. The farm describes its high-density planting as a way to save water and energy, and says it grows without commercial herbicides or pesticides.

The u-pick season is short. The website gives it as July 15 through August 1, weather permitting, and asks visitors to call ahead near the end, because cherry timing shifts from year to year. A farm stand opens during harvest. Over the summers it has sold shirts, hoodies, jams, salsas, chutneys, and juices along with the fruit. Pets stay out of the orchard during picking, and the farm points dog owners to Flathead Lake State Park, about half a mile away. No hives are kept in the rows during the season, though the orchard notes that bees are always present around a working orchard.

The 2026 harvest closed at the end of July. On July 29 the farm posted that the coming Saturday would be its last day: “Every visit to the orchard, every bucket of cherries, and every preserve you’ve taken home has meant so much to our family.” Two days later it was open once more, selling Sweetheart cherries, jams, and t-shirts.

A field day in 2016

The orchard began in 2014, when Kristen Von Doersten planted her first cherry trees and grape vines. A 2019 version of the farm’s website shows a gallery photograph captioned “Newly Planted Cherry Trees (2014).”

By the summer of 2016 she was teaching what she had learned. On June 14 of that year, Missoula’s Community Food and Agriculture Coalition held one of its free farmer field days at the orchard. The session, titled “Starting an Organic Orchard and Vineyard,” was aimed at people just starting out in farming. It ran from 4 to 6 in the afternoon and was followed by a potluck dinner. The coalition’s notice suggested guests “stay for a swim at the state park after.”

The notice said that Von Doersten was managing 160 grape vines of four varietals and 270 cherry trees of another four, and that she would cover preparing for USDA organic inspection and certification. The farm’s current listing names three grape varieties. The Missoulian covered the series. The coalition’s program director, Annie Heuscher, told the paper the hope was “that the field days will give beginning farmers a broad understanding of the diverse ways to farm in Montana.”

Ten years on, the farm’s website carries a plainer line beside its directions to Cherrywood Lane: “Pick Something Real.”