Ken and I left the CG around 9:30 to go to the 15th Annual Cranberry Harvest Celebration in Wareham, MA which was about 45 minutes from the CG and actually off the Cape. It is an amazing festival and we were so happy to be a part of it for this is the last year they will be having it. I believe it takes way too much preparation and background work and the cranberry industry is seeing a decline in the price for their harvested cranberries. We talked with a lady who worked for the A.D. Makepeace Company on whose land this Celebration is held, and she had worked for them for about 13 years and was "let go" this past January. She said they have to downsize the staff because in the last several years the price of a barrel of cranberries (100 lbs.) has dropped from $60. to $30. due to an oversupply (the law of supply and demand!). Sounds like so many of the "farming" type businesses today!
 |
| You could take a duck or swan pedal boat ride or view the bogs from helicopter rides. |
This festival was sponsored by the A.D. Makepeace Company, Ocean Spray, and the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers Association and it was so well organized and very informative. Cranberries get their name from the resemblance of their blossom to the sandhill crane.
 |
| I found this rather fascinating especially since we see sandhill cranes in Florida! |
The Makepeace Company harvests over 2,000 acres of cranberries and most of it is done in about 6 weeks and gives them about 400,000 barrels a year. We went to Cranberries 101 and the speaker was a woman who is 2nd generation on the "farm" she owns. Her daughters will be taking it over when she retires. She gave a very informative talk on the industry and it is a year round project to get a good harvest.
We took a wagon ride around a bog (they took us to that area via a school bus) where they were harvesting today in one blog that covered 16 acres.
 |
| The wagon ride around the 16 acre blog. The daughter of the Cranberry 101 talk spoke to us as we took the ride! |
 |
| "Corralling" the cranberries toward the suctioning area! |
 |
| It is such a colorful site! |
 |
| Yes, just like on TV. They keep diminishing the size of the circle to get the berries closer to the "trucking operation"! |
It was fascinating to see how it is done and following the ride you could go up on a platform where you could view the "operation". The wet harvest is where they get cranberries for juice, crasins and sauce so they flood the area and then they drive through with a small tractor like machine that actually combs the cranberries so they float to the top. Then the gentlemen rakes them (like you see on TV complete with their rubber overalls and boots), pushing them into a small area where they are "sucked" into a large flexible type hose, onto a conveyor belt and then onto a huge truck. The water and leaves are separated onto another truck.
 |
| Waiting to go on the platform to get an overview of the harvesting process! |
 |
| After flooding the bog, this machine "combs" the bottom bringing the cranberries to the surface! |
 |
| Up the conveyor belt from the water.... |
 |
| ...and then dumped onto the waiting truck! |
 |
| That's a lot of cranberries! |
 |
| If you paid $25.00 you got the rubber overalls and boots and could walk through the bog! |
We then walked to the area where they dry harvest about 5% of the berries and those are the ones you buy whole at the grocery store. It is a much more labor intensive process, because they go through the blog walking behind a "lawn mower" type machine that picks them up and places them in a relatively small burlap bag. The growers get the best price for these cranberries, but only a small amount get picked up with that method. Then that blog is flooded so the remaining berries can be wet harvested!
 |
| Before the "lawn mower" type machine, that scoop was used to loosen the cranberries for the dry harvest. What a backbreaking job! |
 |
| This burlap bag is attached to the bag of the machine that gathers the cranberries for the dry method! |
All cranberries taste the same whether dark or light red or white. The white ones are used for white cranberry juice and the lighter red (almost pink) are now being introduced to consumers as pink cranberry juice with a percentage of the sales going to breast cancer research.
 |
| They were giving samples of their new product, the pink cranberry juice. It is very good, but I don't think it has been marketed yet! |
Just a few additional facts. The machinery used is not made by a company like John Deere or Sperry. Most of the growers build their own!
 |
| This is the combing machine that the growers build. These growers have to be a jack of all trades! |
They also have to be very careful about snow and ice during the winter, watering the plants so the ice does not go the whole way to the bottom of the plant, much the same that is done to strawberries. Of course they have to guard against bugs, worms, etc. that can attack the bogs. Once the bogs are established they will keep producing for many, many years, but if the crop is less productive, they will allow them to be dormant for 1 year.
They also had a couple give a talk on owls. We only caught the very end of the presentation, but this is a photo of their eagle owl, which is found in Asia.
We had to take a school bus from the bog area back to the entrance where they were selling cranberry products and also had a juried craft show. Because of the huge crowds attending the festival it took us over 40 minutes of waiting in line, boarding the bus and then driving the 5 minutes back to the main gate.
 |
| A huge line waiting for the busses! |
We only left the festival around 4:15, made a stop at Wal-Mart for a few items, and got back to the CG at 5:30. It was a long, but fun day! I started working on this blog (with Ken's help) and then downloaded all the photos he had taken today! We finished our game of Hand and Foot and I won by 1,000 points! We are certainly making the most of everyday while here on the Cape!
No comments:
Post a Comment