Last year I made a blog on the cranberry harvest in Chatsworth, NJ. It was good but this is a new year and I have new photos. I feel very thrilled and honored to have been invited to the harvest by my cranberry growing friend. I grew up in Hammonton that was home to farmers of all types of fruits and vegetables. Even at age twelve I got my working papers and got a summer job picking blueberries on a farm a few blocks from my home. All farming is interesting to me and I love farmers of all types. I would call it the original occupation. It involves biology, outdoor life, water resources, land conservation, economics, machinery and the unpredictable weather.
However, cranberry farming seems to have cornered another area: magnificent natural beauty. No other farming involves wide swaths of flooded bog land that turns into a spectacular sea of red when the berries are harvested. Specialized tractors are used in the bogs and soon the crimson berries are floating with swirls of variegated hues. I think in the future you will see more farm tours because people have a keen interest in watching this type of harvest. Most farmers do not welcome you to view the cranberry harvest. After all when harvest day comes the farmer does not want to worry about some tourist sliding down the slippery banks of the bog or something worse. So I feel very lucky to have had a close-up view. I looked on line for tours and there seems to have been some farms that allowed visitors in the past but the farms that were mentioned were not active this year. So I was surprised as I left when I saw a tour bus pull into the farm. About 20 guests got out but I think they missed much of the work that had been done that day. Here is my blog from last year. Another fantastic scene over the bogs are the vintage biplanes. They are used for applying fertilizer and pesticides to the bogs:
http://sixty-fourandcounting-philly.blogspot.com/2011/10/cranberry-harvest.html
Seen below are the men with the machines that rattle and release the berries from the vines in the flooded bog. Some refer to the machines as "egg beaters":
Some effort is needed to turn the machine around for the next row:
Variety in the colors---swirls of darker red:
Notice the yellow boom that corrals the berries before they are sucked up on the conveyor leading to waiting trucks:
Serious Farm Talk:
The bogs are flooded in the winter to protect them from the deep freeze but this is not the only time that the flooding helps. Reservoirs of water need to be large for this flooding and for irrigation purposes. Below find a wooden gate or sluice gate as some call it. This is the mechanism that allows the water to fill the bog.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/botany/cranberry-bogs2.htm
I am going to call these Yellow Rumped Warblers. These were the only birds that were hanging out near the bogs. I just bought a new Peterson's Bird Guide book and it was the best I could come up with noting the pointy beak and the streaked breaks and bits of yellow.
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