Cranberry Harvest, Plymouth MA, 10/16

We visited some cranberry bogs in Plymouth County during harvest season. This one is in Wareham, but most of the other pictures are from Plymouth.

Massachusetts was once the leading producer of cranberries in America, and therefore the world. Wisconsin has wrested that title from us, although most Americans still associate cranberries with Thanksgiving, and, therefore, Massachusetts.

Cranberries were being cultivated by the Narragansett people long before European colonization. They called them sasemineash, and used them for both dye and pemmican.

Plymouth and the town's of Plymouth County are chock full of cranberry bogs. I don't have the numbers handy, but Carver and Middleboro may have the most per capita.

Ocean Spray was founded in Massachusetts, based on a giant bog in Hanson.

White berries are sold separately, after they divvy up the colors.

European colonists often called them Bearberries, as bears would fatten upon them just before hibernating.

October is generally harvest season for cranberry farmers. The harvest can be early/late/mid October, depending on when the frosts come.

If you poured enough milk in there and floated a gang of blueberries in the upper left hand corner, you could make a pretty cool Old Glory.

A quick look at the name if this website is all the prompting you'd need to guess that we shall do several of these articles before Thanksgiving is past us. I need to do more sunny day cranberry photography.