The only things that would make this property better for me is a shallower well that produces more than 7gpm (400ft deep, static water 200ft) and a bit more flat land (most of it is sloped).

I plan on putting in a small orchard of 15-20 fruit trees total, with a mix of apple, plum, sweet cherry and pear and will use the slope to my advantage to provide gravity fed irrigation to the orchard from a tank/cistern. 8-10 PSI should be no problem to achieve. Perhaps even greater depending on exactly where I site the orchard.

Does anyone have suggestions on irrigating such a setup? Products to use?

Also, I’m planning an 8’ deer fence around the orchard since deer, elk etc are common in the area. Steel garden fencing or is “deer netting” sufficient? The steel garden fence would last longer, most likely.

You need both a sweet cherry and a pie cherry for those to produce EX Ranier &  Montmorency .  You need more than one variety of apple to reproduce EX  Golden Delicious or Yellow Delicious + any of the red ones  Gravenstein is my favorite off the tree but other ones keep longer.   Asian pear Starking® Hardy Giant™ Asian Pear

FYI  7th year planted just got cherries this year. Have had asian pears and apples for several years some plums but big crop of them this year. Walnuts a few last year more this year.  All three almond trees died. Plant blackberries boysenberries etc.   blueberries takes two varieties also.

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Congrats on the property.  Post pics if you don't mind.  MT is beautiful.

Good luck with the trees!

Thanks!

I should have mentioned that I’ve really maximized my .29ac suburban lot  in MN over the years. A couple Honeycrisp and a Macintosh apple, small plot of raspberries, large (for the lot) 14x50” garden, six raised garden beds.

Cherries are new to me completely. Would 2 sweet cherry varieties do the trick, or does it need to be a completely different type?

I planted a Black Tartarian sweet cherry and 2 sour Bing cherries 8 years ago - the Black T. and one Bing died a few years back. The remaining Bing has since put out cherries but the birds usually get them until this year - we made some fantastic cherry jam. I'm pretty sure the Bing is getting pollinated from the huge wild sweet cherry tree in the field nearby. Don't know if Montana has wild cherry trees...

Our favorite apple tree is our Jonathon - for making applesauce, not fresh eating. Jonathon is supposed to be a good pollinator but we also have Yellow Delicious, Gala, Fuji, & Honeycrisp that all play together OK. We even got peaches on our trees this year!! Very rare that they make it thru our last frost around here or even blackberry winter will sometimes be bad enough to do them in.

Good luck on your new venture.

Our rescue apple tree we found dirt cheap turned out to be a Liberty.  Outdoes everything else we have and we have over a dozen different varieties.   Sweet and tart at the same time.  Perfect for cider and Dutch apple pie.

One pie cherry has struggled for the past 4 years and I'm going to transplant to the woods.

check out how the bullock brothers on orcas island move water uphill for dirt cheap.

also I'd ask locals and the local extension office about fencing. Elk can be pretty tough on fences.