Brovold Orchard: Who We Are, How We Got Here, and What We Do. Part 1

Part 1: The Beginning 

If you’re new to the area, or if you’ve been here for awhile and never visited Brovold Community Orchard, you may wonder what we’re all about. In this five-part series, we’ll look at Brovold Orchard’s origins, our mission, and our vision for where we hope to go in the future. Look for Parts 2-5 of this series when they are posted here in the coming weeks.

Julius Brovold’s and Emma Sekse’s parents were Norwegian immigrants who came to America in the 1800s looking for greater opportunities. They settled in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin and began their new lives. Julius and Emma were born there, eventually met, and decided to wed. They settled on a 40-acre farm outside of Ettrick where their most fruitful produce was a family of one daughter and nine sons. The humid Wisconsin climate didn’t agree with Julius, though, and he was tired and sickly from struggling through the recent Great Depression years. So, in the mid-1940s he sold the farm and moved his family to the drier climate of eastern Montana where he hoped to begin anew. Julius and Emma managed a hotel in Lavina, Montana for a few years until they purchased a tourist court (a motel with individual cabins) and 100 acres of steep rocky mountainside at Alberton, Montana in 1952. One of their sons, Norman, a newlywed and recently discharged from the US Army, moved there to help his parents manage the property.

Norman picking apples in the late 1950s.

Norman was a kind-hearted jack-of-all-trades with strong beliefs about serving others in his community. In those days you needed multiple skills to earn a living in rural Montana, and Norman was a welder, mechanic, and logger. He plowed snow for the town, and he drove Alberton’s school bus. Norman helped build the town’s 300,000-gallon water tank, the bridge across the Clark Fork River near the mouth of Petty Creek, and the Community Church, among other projects. In short, Norman was a valued member of his community who could be called upon whenever someone needed help. 

Lawyer Nursery was a wholesale plant nursery located between Plains and Thompson Falls, about 80 miles north of Alberton. They were a large nursery with sales on a national and international scale. One day the nursery owner was passing through Alberton when his pickup truck broke down. In trying to find someone to get it running again, everyone in town told him to go see Norman. Norman did get the truck repaired, refusing any payment, and in appreciation, Mr. Lawyer invited him to visit his nursery where he said he had “something” to give him.

Upon visiting the nursery, Mr. Lawyer loaded Norman’s pickup down with fruit trees, far exceeding any expectations. Arriving back home with a big load of trees, Norman needed something to do with them. So, he planted an orchard in an area of the property that was formerly used as a horse pasture.

Once asked why he planted an orchard, Norman replied, “ I grew up during the Great Depression when times were really tough, and many people didn’t have enough to eat. If you were so bold as to pick an apple off someone’s tree, you could go to jail. I never wanted anyone in Alberton to go hungry.”  So, from the orchard’s beginning, it was Norman’s intention to share it with his friends and neighbors in the community. He did so faithfully for decades, letting anyone from the community come and pick fruit whenever they wanted, and never charged anyone for any of it.

Norman Brovold at age 91.

Norman passed away in 2022 at the age of 93. His daughter, Jeanne, and her husband, Bob Summerfield, became the new owners of the orchard. Their desire is to honor Norman’s life and continue his dream of serving his community through the orchard. They made the orchard a charitable nonprofit community orchard managed by a board of directors formed from representatives of Alberton and other nearby communities. Jeanne and Bob’s two sons, Jason and Jordan, are members of the board, have assumed ownership rights to parts of the property, and will ensure that it is managed as a community resource well into the future.

Brovold Community Orchard is not just about giving away fruit. We have a fourfold mission aimed at strengthening the nutritional, educational, recreational, and social aspects of our community. In Parts 2-5 of this series, we’ll cover each of the four pillars of our mission in detail. We’ll talk about what each mission pillar means, what we’re doing now, how we hope to grow in the future, and how you, our community members, fit into that picture. Look for the next parts of this five-part series in the coming weeks.

 

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