For years we’ve talked about traveling to see cranberry harvest.
While most people think of cranberries in New England, Wisconsin is actually the cranberry capital, producing more than half of the world’s supply.
We learned that the high school in Pittsville, WI has the nation’s only Cranberry Science class, and the FFA students lead a “Splash of Red Cranberry Tour.” So we signed up!
It was an absolutely perfect October day.
After a short introduction in the auditorium with the teacher and her students, we boarded a school bus and rode out to a field in the process of harvesting.
They were corralling the cranberries in a bog. (Contrary to popular belief, cranberries don’t grow underwater.) It was fascinating to see the whole process.
Each cranberry bed is 150 feet wide and up to 1200 feet long, with dikes in between. The vines are very low to the ground and are pollinated by bees (which are brought in every year). The perennial vines take about three years to produce any fruit. At harvest time, the beds are flooded (like a giant bathtub) and the water is stirred up so cranberries float to the surface.
There are different methods for harvest, depending on whether the berries will be fresh or processed. We watched as the berries were loaded into an open-top semi-trailer. (While dodging a few stray berries!)
Our next stop was the processing plant. First we watched as they unloaded the entire truck — tons of berries came tumbling out in less than five minutes!
Inside the lab, we learned how they test the berries to check for color and ripeness. Farmers are paid based on the color (darker, redder berries earn more). They use a 10-pound bag for testing, then keep those berries on file for several years.
Our last stop at the plant was watching them fill the bins with the freshly-delivered berries straight off the truck. Each bin full of berries is about a five-foot cube that’s labeled with the farm name and taken by forklift to the warehouse freezer — where they’re stacked six or seven crates high!
When we returned to the high school, the students served us a cran-infused lunch: a pulled pork sandwich with cranberry horseradish sauce, Wisconsin cheese soup, and ice cream with cranberry sauce. We also got a goodie bag with a bottle of cranberry juice and a packet of dried cranberries.
After lunch, the two of us set out on a self-guided tour of the Cranberry Highway, a 50-mile drive through central Wisconsin.
We drove past countless cranberry farms (called marshes), some of which are more than 100 years old, and have been in the same family for five or six generations. (More on that in a bit!)
The next day, we were looking forward to seeing the Cranberry Museum … but it was closed! We learned from someone in town that we should drive over to the Wetherby Cranberry Farm, and ask the lady there to show us her “mini museum.”
We followed the “Fresh cranberries straight ahead” signs, and it turned out even better!
Nodji is the third of five generations on the farm, and she happily shared her personal collection with us. We saw the old wooden hand-powered equipment (which they used until 2007), along with the modern machines they use now. She even had a diorama of the cranberry beds in all four seasons, plus arial photos of cranberries floating in the bog. Before we left, we couldn’t resist taking home a bottle of cranberry honey.
Cranberry Fun Facts:
- Cranberries are grown in sandy soil on low-lying woody vines
- They’re native to Wisconsin and were named the state fruit in 2004
- Americans consume 400 million pounds of the berries each year (20 percent of those during Thanksgiving week alone!)
- Only 5% of berries are grown for fresh fruit; the rest are processed
- Cranberries are measured in “barrels,” with one barrel equaling 100 pounds
- The fields are flooded again in the late fall, so the berries end up under a thick ice blanket. Then they spread sand on top, which sinks into the beds as the ice melts in the spring.
Want to plan your own cranberry harvest experience?
- Splash of Red Cranberry Tours
- Cranberry Highway info
- Wetherby Cranberry Co. (with a video of Nodji)
- Wisconsin Rapids area Cranberry attractions
- More cranberry adventure ideas
