When I hear the word cranberry, the first thing that enters my mind is homemade cranberry sauce we always had on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Many of you probably know cranberries are harvested in bogs and starting in September/October many Northwoods towns celebrate the harvest (Eagle River cranberry fest was last weekend).

Did you know Wisconsin is the top producer of cranberries in the United States? It’s true, the badger state contributes 60% or 4.9 million barrels of cranberries each year, but has anyone thought how this red fruit shows up on the shelves at our grocery stores. Well, in the spring, cranberry seeds are planted in Wisconsin’s sandy acidic soil and grow into vines. When it comes to harvesting these little red gems, there are two methods, WET harvesting and DRY harvesting.

The DRY harvesting cranberries are the fresh ones sold in the produce section and represents only 5% of all cranberries harvested. To reduce bruising, this type of harvesting is done in the morning when it’s cooler and the berries/vines must be totally dry and dry harvesting is labor intensive. A walk behind mechanical picker gently combs the berries off the vine and deposits the cranberries on to a conveyer into burlap bags in the back of the machine. Once the bag is full, it’s taken off the machine, placed on the ground and a new burlap bag is applied.
To prevent crushing the berries, some farmers will use shallow wood or plastic containers (picture inserted) Then those are cleaned, sorted and stored in a cool dry place.

The WET harvesting is less labor intensive and thanks to modern equipment this farming technique is more efficient because a larger quantity can be harvested in a shorter period of time. When the cranberries are ripe, the bog they grow in is flooded with 8 to 12 inches of water and current from rotating paddles causes berries to loosen from the vines. Once the cranberries are detached, they float to the surface because of an internal air pocket and are easily accessible.

When the red berries are floating on top of the water, they are corralled using floating barriers (opening picture) and removed by either scooping or vacuumed into trucks before being processed. This is when the cranberries are cleaned, graded and sorted based on size and quality. And that is how cranberries are harvested, the end.