Swanson Orchard by Rollo Scott
Carl Swanson cannot think of anything that has not changed in the Bitterroot Valley since he was born here 88 years ago. Even the mountains that sit resplendent across the bottomland look different after all the fires.
Swansons have lived here growing apples and cattle on the Bitterroot Valley’s eastern fringe just north of Corvallis for nearly 100 years.
It was Carl’s father, a Swedish immigrant named Charles J Swanson, originally Karl Johan Svenson, who left a mill in Rockford Illinois in 1908 and came west to Montana looking for a home.
The Bitterroot Valley was apple country then, with many small orchards putting crates on trains headed for Chicago and New York, and Charles J Swanson planted his first orchard in 1909. Although only one of the original trees stands, the farm still produces apples each fall, and his great-grandson Charles L Swanson is one of the few Bitterroot farmers still making a living off of fruit.
Bitterroot orchards began to disappear as apple production along the east coast increased in the 1900s and coddling moth moved into western Montana creating inconsistencies in the crop. Transportation costs soon got the better of profits and most orchards were left unattended to slowly deteriorate.
The Swansons were not unaffected by this market transition, but they continued caring for their trees, and because they were diversified into cattle and whatever other small-time operations they thought could draw a profit, they were able to treat the apple income as a bonus, something they would not rely on until it was in the bank.
It was not until Charles L Swanson took over the farm in 1985 that apples returned to the fore.
“It was a niche I thought I could expand on,” he said.
He said that he wanted to keep the family farm going, and that he chose apples because it is what the foothills land where his farm sits is best suited for, and because in the small local apple market he would be able to have at least a little say in what he thought his crop should be worth.
The farm now grows 19 varieties of apples (they used to grow 45 but ended up spending too much time explaining the subtle differences to customers) that sell, along with their cider, throughout the Bitterroot and Missoula.
Swanson is not particularly worried about new local competition because apples are a high-risk crop (there have been years when the Swansons have lost whole harvests to early frost) that requires scarce specialized knowledge and equipment. Also, the initial costs of planting orchards are significant, and the long period of time that it takes to recover these costs can be daunting. Charles L Swanson planted a new orchard in 2005 and does not expect to make a profit off of it before 2012.
Charles L Swanson is quick to speak of the stress that these uncertainties carry, and he said that it has been hard on him and his wife Julie. When disasters like an early frost strike, he said, “I cuss and she cries.” But the choice he made to carry on the family farm is one he stands by.
“I guess you wouldn’t understand that unless it was your family spent all that blood sweat and tears. Why would you just squander that away?” he said.
In apples, the Swansons have found a product that has allowed them to maintain their family farm while others around them have disintegrated. For them, the influx of people into the Bitterroot Valley has meant a growing market, but for most ranchers, the changes that Carl Swanson has seen wash over the valley in his lifetime have not been for the better.
As more people have moved into the valley, Carl Swanson said, the availability of land for cattle ranching has plummeted, strangling many operations. Even for those farmers who continue to grow beef, things are not the same.
When he used to raise a lot of cattle, Carl Swanson said, he could rent a little space from his neighbors here and there when he needed it, but now renting has become more difficult and farmers need to shuttle their stock between distant pastures. Because of this, he said, many farmers do not have the same sort of relationship with the land they use, and they don’t put the same effort into maintenance, especially of shared infrastructure like fences.
“Rented property isn’t good.” Carl Swanson said. “You have to own it and have a feeling for it to make a good community.”
When he was a boy Carl Swanson pretty much knew everyone in the valley. Everyone intermarried and neighbors often traded labor during harvests, he said. When the big threshing machines used to come through the valley, he said, farmers would move with it from spread to spread making sure that all their neighbors got their harvests in.
“A community changes a lot from having people owning land versus renting it,” Carl Swanson said. Now, he said, he doesn’t even know many of his neighbors.