Cranberry Harvest 2013

flooded cranberry bog with the picked berries floating and ready to be suctioned off of the bog into the waiting trucks to bring the berries to Ocean Spray.
ripe cranberries on the vine ready to be harvested

Fall has arrived. Nights have turned cool and the leaves on the trees are starting to turn brillant colors. Some trees are already losing their leaves. Apples are ready to be picked, along with pumpkins. The cranberries have turned a beautiful dark red.. That means it is cranberry harvest time for my family and other cranberry grower's.
empty vintage 6 quart cranberry measure and vintage hand snap machine ready for me to start picking some cranberries.  It takes 5 1/2 measures to fill a large cranberry box.  16 1/2 measure to fill a barrel that holds a 100 pounds. Years ago cranberries were hand picked off of the bogs. Can you imagine how long that must have taken and how back breaking that was.

Later..  the above 2 pieces of equipment were used to harvest the cranberry crop. Rows of pickers went in a horizontal line across the bog until the cranberries were all harvested from a bog.  Harvesting  the crop was work when you had several acres of bog to pick.
hand snapped measure of cranberries
metal rod/teeth of the hand snap machine. The berries are stripped off the vine with the metal teeth into the scoop.
    

Then came the larger hand scoop
large vintage wooden hand scoop and large box of berries. This larger scoop was used to harvest the berries from the bog. Still very tiring after a day of picking.
After the scoops, came machines where all the berries were picked on dry bogs.
Darlington picker held a box on the back that the berries that were beat off the bog went up the conveyor belt and dropped into the box. The boxes were then taken off of the bog in a wheeling off rig. The box were then trucked to the plant for processing.

The bigger and heavier Western Picker. The teeth were different, and this machine the berries were stripped from the vines, went up a little elevator and dropped into bags in the back of the machine. The berries were then taken off the bog, sifted to remove vines and then boxed and put on a truck to take them to the Ocean Spray plant.

Picking Machines used on dry cranberry bogs to harvest the crop.
Western Pickers


Now we mostly flood the bogs and use a riding machine that reels on the front beat the berries off of the vine. The bog is flooded and you don't have to worry about cold, frosty nights, as the bog is covered in water. The berries have 4 hollow chambers inside and float to the top of the surface of the water. The cranberries are then corralled with booms and then suctioned off the bog into a truck to be taken to the plant.
machine that is now used to wet harvest the cranberries. The reel on the front of the machine beats the berries off of the vine
my brother, Richard running a wet picking machine

The inside of a cranberry has 4 hollow chambers with tiny seeds, because the berries are hollow they float to the surface of the water after they are knocked off of the vine.
close up of inside of a cranberry and it's tiny seeds


corralled berries
 
suctioning the berries off of the bog into the truck
Cranberry harvest has come a long way. It is still hard work with long days, 7 days a week until all the bogs are picked, but so much easier than 100 years ago.
Bella patting Cocoa's tail. Cocoa is Kelly's dog.
Bella was afraid of Cocoa until and then she loved him and was petting and hugging him all afternoon.
    Saturday 9/28/13 was a beautiful, warm and sunny day. My niece, Kelly and granddaughter, Bella sitting on a large rock watching the cranberry harvest.
corralled berries and cloud reflection on the water of the bog
frog in the bog ditch 

These are just a few of my harvest photos. I hope you enjoyed them. I will most likely share more photos as the cranberry harvest continues. I have more cranberry photos with info on my picture trail site.cranberry bog album
also another website for you to view
history of cranberries and how they grown

Elaine