To Market, To Market

I've just returned from Washington, DC, where the US Cranberry Marketing Committee held its winter meeting. The Committee traditionally meets twice a year. The summer meeting moves to a different growing region each year (it was New Jersey's turn in the summer of 2009), but the winter meeting is held in Washington, DC, for access to personnel at the US Department of Agriculture and other officials with interest in the Committee. It's an open meeting with active participation from the audience, who represent cranberry growers and handlers from around the country and the world.

The Cranberry Marketing Committee was established in 1962 as a Federal Marketing Order. It's intended to maintain supply and demand equilibrium for US-grown cranberries. In the past, an oversupply of cranberries has led the committee to regulate production, but the current focus is on increasing the generic promotion of US cranberries in a number of markets around the world. If you visit the website, you can find links to the Cranberry Marketing Committee's websites around the globe, in addition to a bunch of great recipes and other information about cranberries.

Why aren't there any fresh cranberries now?

Oooo, this is an easy question! Almost all of the cranberries in the world are produced in North America. The harvest season typically runs from mid-September through mid-November, and most cranberry bogs are harvested wet--you know, like you see in the commercials with those two guys in waders? Wet-harvested fruit is most suitable for processing; it's sold to be used for juices, sweetened dried cranberries, sauce, and the like. Wet-harvesting is the most efficient means of harvesting.

A small number of acres are harvested dry for fresh fruit. Bags of fresh cranberries are easy to find in most markets during October, November, and December! Unfortunately for people in NJ who are looking for locally-produced cranberries, the vast majority of our growers exclusively wet-harvest. Locally-grown cranberries can be found in some local supermarkets and farmers markets during the fall, and quite a few can be found at the Chatsworth Cranberry Festival in October.

To have fresh cranberries during the rest of the year, your best bet is to stock up in the fall. Cranberries freeze very well. Sort through the berries before freezing them, but don't rinse them (they'll freeze in a big clump if you do). They can be frozen for six months (I've kept them for longer, but six months is the generally accepted interval) and can be used without thawing in any recipe that calls for fresh cranberries.

Do cranberry growers all go on vacation during the winter when the bogs are flooded?

My favorite answer to this question is, "Yes, we all go to Florida and count our money."

Unfortunately for my tan, that particular answer isn't true.

Here in New Jersey, we do flood the bogs for the winter to protect the dormant cranberry vines and their buds from damage from the cold. That doesn't mean there isn't plenty of work to do! On our farm, we build and repair machinery, maintain the dams (roads between the bogs) and gates (structures for moving water between bogs, reservoirs, and canals), build and repair the boxes that we use for transporting cranberries to our packing house during the harvest season, build new gates, build new sprinklers, work on bog renovation when the weather is suitable, plan for the upcoming season, attend grower meetings, and deal with standard business issues like budgeting and taxes.

One winter task that is unique to cranberries is the practice of sanding. The story goes that cranberry cultivation began in 1816 as a result of a Massachusetts man noticing that the wild cranberries near his home grew better when sand blew over the vines. Sanding has been an important practice industry-wide ever since. We typically put a layer of 1/2" to 1" of sand on each bog every 4-5 years. The sand covers the layer of "organic matter" that develops below the vines as they lose some of older leaves each year. This helps to stimulate growth, reduce weeds, and suppress some insects.

This is my aunt visiting where they loaded the flatbed carts back in the railroad-sanding days...

On our farm, we used to have portable narrow-gauge railroad tracks that we would use to run little flat-bed carts from a sandhole to a bog. Men shoveled the sand directly onto the dry vines. Fortunately for everyone involved, a New Jersey grower developed a system of barge-sanding flooded bogs in the 1970s. We run a barge back and forth across the bogs on a cable which is anchored by a tractor with a winch on one end and an excavator on the other. Dump trucks haul sand to the site, back up to the excavator, and pile the sand for the excavator to load the barge.

...and this is me and a family friend riding along with my dad on a barge sander.

Allow Myself to Introduce...Myself

I'm Becca. I'm a fifth-generation New Jersey cranberry grower and a member of the Board of Directors of the American Cranberry Growers Association (and currently the secretary, too). If you've visited our booth at any local festivals in the past three years, there's a good chance that you've met me. I'm going to use this space not just for ACGA news and events, but to let people know what might be happening on my farm on any given day, to point out new developments in the cranberry industry worldwide, and to highlight interesting facts or articles that I might run across.

I'm going to try persuade some other growers to chime in here, too. Tom, who was kind enough to set up this blog and the ACGA's website, works on another farm and can testify to the fact that although the principles of cranberry growing are the same across the board, we all handle things a little bit differently. Not only do our methods evolve independently over time, we take ideas from other growers and tweak them to suit our own circumstances. We work closely with the researchers from the Philip E. Marucci Center for Blueberry and Cranberry Research and Extension and with the companies that handle our fruit to ensure that our cranberries are grown using the most efficient and healthful techniques and materials available. Ours is truly a cooperative industry.

Next Topic: Do cranberry growers all go on vacation during the winter when the bogs are flooded?

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Cranberry Bogs On Ice

Welcome to NJ Cranberry Blog.  A place to keep up with all the ACGA (American Cranberry Growers Association) events and news.