MIDDLEBORO, Mass. — Weeks before Thanksgiving, some of the cranberries that will be on dinner plates Thursday were floating on the Rocky Meadow bog in southeastern Massachusetts.
The cranberries have turned this pond pinkish crimson. Several workers, up to their waist in water, gently corral the berries toward a pump that vacuums them up onto a waiting truck. There, the berries are run through a system that separates them from leaves and vines and are transported to processing plant, which eventually turns them into sauce, juice or sweet and dried berries.
The native wetland plants that produce cranberries start growing in May. When they are ready to be harvested, farmers flood their bogs with water and send out a picking machine to shake the berries from the vines. Then more water is added to the bog, and the freed cranberries float to the surface.
“The season has been pretty good this year. We’ve had a pretty good crop,” said Steve Ward, a second-generation cranberry grower, on the edge of his bog.
The harvest runs from September through early November, and Ward is expected to produce between 15,000 and 20,000 barrels, the best crop he has had in three years. About 80% of those berries will go to Ocean Spray, a massive producer of cranberry products in the U.S.
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