Cranberry Harvest, Plymouth County

Thanksgiving is here, and cranberries are an intgral part of the holiday. With that in mind, we thought that we'd give you all of the cranberry knowledge that you could possibly need... short of if you decided to open a bog for yourself.

Cranberries are an evergreen shrub that grows in some form or another in Europe, Asia and the Americas. They get their name because, at some point in their growth cycle, they look like little cranes. They were also known to the Wamoanoags as sasemineash, and used by them for food (mostly pemmican) and dye. The cranberry alone is very tart, almost too tart to be edible, and needs to be cut with a pile of sugar. Bears don't feel the same way, and fatten on cranberries before they hibernate. No less an authority than Roger Williams called them bearberries, and the name was popular enough to be synonymous for a while.

Cranberries were introduced to colonists by the natives. Virginia explorer/colonial history going back to 1550 speaks of natives meeting Europeans with gifts of cranberries. The Pilgrims were introduced to them by the Narragansetts. By 1633, there are records of a Mary Ring in Plymouth selling cranberry dyed petticoats. In 1663, a Pilgrim cookbook had a recipe for cranberry sauce. A 1683 cookbook had cranberry juice recipes. A 1672 book on New England describes them as being "excellent against the Scurvy." Thomas Jefferson, while in France, accepted cranberries as payment for diplomatic work. By 1816, American Revolution vet Henry Hall had begun to cultivate cranberries commercially on Cape Cod.

Cranberries are grown in wetlands, and work in sand. They are harvested when the berries get red... pretty much what you see in these pictures, depending on the lighting. White berries are less mature than red ones, and go to an altogether different sort of cranberry juice. The bogs are flooded, the berries are loosed with a harvester (watch one in action in this article), pushed into a corner and pumped into a waiting truck.

A bog has a lot of berries. They will fill dozens of these trucks at a good-sized bog. Those berries spill at times, and many roads in cranberry towns like Middleboro and Carver get a cranberry-tinged look. The berries are then taken to receiving stations for cleaning/sorting/storage. 5-10% of US cranberries are dry harvested with scoops, but ol' Steve didn't get to any of those bogs today.

Cranberries presently occupy 40,000 acres in the US. New England alone had 21,000 of those in the old days, while Wisconsin leads the league ATM. Massachusetts produces 23% of the US cranberry crop. Much larger Wisconsin is the US leader, with about 65% of the crop. We mean no disrespect to the good people of Wisconsin, who gave us The Fonz, Brett Favre, Kelso and Joseph Schlitz... but when people think of cranberries, they think of Pilgrims... who lived in Massachusetts. If your berries aren't from Massachusetts, your berries are whick-whick-whack.

If the right people were running Ocean Spray, they would make special cranberry sauce for the holidays made only with berries from Plymouth County. "Just like the factory-processed cranberry sauce that John Alden didn't have!" My apologies to the men in the picture above, but Ocean Spray has already employed spokesmen who are standing hip deep in floating cranberries.

Ocean Spray produces 70% of the US cranberry product. They are an agricultural collective based in Middleboro/Lakeville, Massachusetts. They were founded in 1930, in Hanson, MA. Three growers (including A.D. Makepeace, who are the leading grower of cranberries in the world) merged together. to form a collective. They greatly expanded operations into Wisconsin in the early 2000s. They dominate the world market, and were only exempted from antitrust action by some fine print about agriculture.

The price fluctuates wildly. 5 years passed between cranberries going for $65 a barrel and $18 a barrel. A poorly-timed November government report about possible cancer-causing pesticides used in cranberry cultivation collapsed the industry in 1959. This showed the industry that they couldn't rely on holiday sales alone. 

Thanksgiving and Christmas (cranberries are holiday staples in the US and UK) sales weren't enough. Alternate uses were discovered to get people consuming cranberries all year. Several alcoholic drinks, including the Cosmopolitan, the Sea Breeze and the Cape Codder, feature cranberries. Ocean Spray cranked out Cranapple in the 1960s, with juice boxes and Craisins following shortly after.

The US produced 399,734 tons in 2016, more than half the world's total. Canada is a distant second, and Chile gets the bronze. Between them, they grew 667,000 of the world's 683,000 tons of cranberries. The European Union is the world's leading importer of Amerrican cranberries. By country, Canada is first, just ahead of China. 95% of cranberries are processed for juice and sauce. The remainder are sold loose

Cranberry sauce, which is about half sugar, was first offered to consumers in 1913, in Hanson, MA. Canned cranberry sauce came in 1941, allowing it to be available year round.

Canned cranberry sauce made up a large part of food aid to Europe after WWII. Much like how Spam was introduced into England and became a Monty Python skit, cranberry sauce holds an odd spot in British culture.

John Lennon always thought that "cranberry sauce" sounded funny. He also willingly wrote songs that bordered on gibberish. He said "cranberry sauce" in a strange voice for no reason other than mirth at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever. He did so while the Paul Is Dead conspiracy theory was beginning, and "cranberry sauce" was mistaken for "I buried Paul." People still believe it to this day, and think that an imposter has been portraying the Cute Beatle since 1965 or so.

I'm probably omitting something famous, but the only other cranberry reference in popular music is the Wu Tang Clan singing about Cape Codders via "80 proof Absolut mixed with cranberry fruit juice, with a ginseng boost" in Reunited. I'm thinking that Bing Crosby must have cranberries in some Christmas song somewhere.

I'm told that only the eye-scalding citric acid in cranberries kept the WWE from having the Divas wrestle in Cranberry Sauce as opposed to their formerly traditional Gravy Bowl matches.

We employ a guy named Cranberry Jones, who got his nickname in college by drinking and eating voluminous amounts of cranberry products, in an attempt to tint his skin towards maroon. It didn't work, and he spent an hour a day on the toilet.

Since we're discussing the toilet, I am reading that cranberry juice has some effect on urinary tract infections. WPI did a study on it in 2010. Ocean Spray tried to claim "authorized health benefits," but the FDA only allowed them to claim "qualified health  benefits," which have a lower bar on scientific agreement. Any government entity strongly advises against self-treating UTIs with cranberry juice.

You can get a pretty good argument in New England over the relative superiority of jellied or loose cranberry sauce, with or without the actual berries in it. You can avoid the argument if you are happy with either one.

Asking "what sort of cranberry sauce does President Trump use?" will get you no answer. Food for the White House is sent unmarked, with no one who doesn't need to know knowing where it comes from. If you send Donald some of your own sauce, it will be destroyed upon arrival by the Secret Service.

Cranapple has two parents, Edward Gelsthorpe and Sylvia Schur. Schur also invented whatever the fuhhhh Clamato is. Gelsthorpe went to his grave with the nickname of "Cranapple Ed." He was also responsible for cranberry juice being introduced to the mixed drink field. He is responsible for the Cape Codder (Cranapple Ed finished his life in Dennis, MA) and the modern recipe for the Sea Breeze, and is indirectly responsible for the Cosmopolitan (created in Provincetown, MA) and the Sex on The Beach (invented by a Florida bartender) through his marketing efforts. The original name for the Cape Codder was the "Red Devil."

The red and white berries are sorted apart at the receiving plant. The red ones are better for sauce, while the white ones are a bit less flavorful and are used as a lightweight cranberry juice.

The harvest needs to be done before it gets too cold. The water is left in the bog to freeze, which protects the plants somehow. Sand is dropped on the ice to sink into the bog and revitalize it. Many New England kids learn to skate on frozen cranberry bogs. In the spring, the plants are pollinated by bees.

I followed the cranberries I was shooting pics of all the way to Ocean Spray's gate. 

Happy Thanksgiving!!