TRAVERSE CITY -- Don't expect to munch on local cherries at this year's National Cherry Festival. The Grand Traverse region's crop will still be clinging to the trees.
Festival organizers, area retail shops and farm markets are resigned to importing cherries from other parts of Michigan for the summer festival that begins Saturday and runs through July 11.
Lingering chilly weather stalled cherry growth and left the crop a week or two behind schedule. That will push the sweet cherry harvest into early July and tart cherry harvest to mid-month, keeping the bulk of the area crop in the orchards for this year's festival.
"It's going to be a week and a half, maybe two weeks before we're picking anything locally," said Dennis Hoxsie, who grows sweet and tart cherries at his Acme Township farm and also runs a farm market along M-72.
Hoxsie said he'll have to truck in sweet cherries from southwest Michigan to stock the market until he can pick fruit.
"Everybody that comes to the festival wants to see local cherries," Hoxsie said. "Unfortunately, there's not a whole heck of a lot we can do about it."
Area business owners said customers prefer local cherries, but foreign cherries won't make visitors think this year's Cherry Festival is the pits.
"Cherry Festival is what it is," said Judy Izard, owner of Peppercorn in downtown Traverse City. "There's too much to do not to come just because we don't have local cherries."
Several downtown merchants focus on providing local cherries, or at least cherries grown in Michigan.
"Our focus is local," said Jamie Roster, owner of The Cherry Stop downtown. "My customers are specifically looking for Michigan cherries. They don't want Oregon or Washington cherries."
It's not overly unusual for the Cherry Festival to be void of local fruit. But warm, dry springs in recent years accelerated fruit development, and created ample opportunities for tourists to enjoy the signature sweet cherries.
Hoxsie compares a Cherry Festival without local fruit to what ski resorts face when they don't have snow between Christmas and New Year's Day. It cuts into profits and represents a key business week that's lost without a chance of full recovery.
"We'll have cherries to sell; they're still Michigan cherries," Hoxsie said. "But the profit thing is different when you can't sell your own."
Local cherries or not, the show must go on, and festival organizers pledge there won't be a cherry shortage.
"When we can't look to our own growers as the first opportunity, we definitely work on the national level," said festival spokeswoman Susan Wilcox Olson. "Visitors will find an abundance of cherries."
Local cherries will be hustled into the festival as soon as they come off the trees, she said.
A solid cherry crop is anticipated this summer, tardy as it may be. The state's tart cherry production is expected to reach 220 million pounds this year, up more than 30 percent from last year's harvest. The crop potential in northwest Michigan is described as "excellent" by the U.S. Department of Agricultural.
The overall condition of Michigan's sweet cherry crop also is rated as "very good to excellent" by the USDA. The projected harvest in Michigan is 28,000 tons, up 5.6 percent from last year.
"Things are great," said Nikki Rothwell, director of the Northwest Michigan Horticultural Research Station. "But they're just not ready yet."
