I recently ran across some photographs of the cranberry harvest back in 1991. It’s hard to believe that twenty-one years have gone by since that wet, windy day watching the action at CranMac with my class of 1st/2nd/3rd graders!
I remember that someone’s (was it Tom Holgate’s?) hat blew into the flooded bog and the wind took it sailing out of reach before we even realized what had happened. Several days later, after the harvest was over no doubt, Ardell McPhail brought the hat up to Ocean Park School. She had washed and dried it much to my amazement and the owner’s delight.
We went to the Cranberry Museum on that field trip, too – probably ate our sack lunches there. Kim Patton let us try harvesting the old-fashioned way with big wooden scoops and compared some of the harvest equipment ‘then’ and ‘now.’ The kids were especially intrigued by the old sorting machine that separated the good from the bad berries by bouncing them through a series of wooden flats.
We rounded out our day by stopping at the Ocean Spray building. I remember hovering over some of the more adventurous kids a bit nervously as we walked around all those conveyor belts and speeding forklifts. I think every boy in the class had dreams of working there some day.
Those long ago cranberry field trips flashed through my mind a few days ago, too, as I drove by CranMac in the bright sunlight. I wondered how they and all the other growers would manage this year with so little rain (as in none) for way too long. Yesterday when I woke up to the wind and the rain, I thought “This feels more like harvest!” But is it too little, too late?
I hope not. While we were reveling in all that Indian Summer weather, I wonder how much worrying the cranberry growers were doing. I have my fingers crossed for a great harvest in spite of all that “good” weather!
Concerns for growers in our area also….recent years have brought disappointments and loss of revenue to the grape growers in Sonoma County. Marijuana growers (some growing in backyards for personal use and others for medical use purchase) were recently “raided” and the crops confiscated and destroyed. I wonder what our planetary mother, Earth feels about her bounty…hummmm???? And, wondering how the hens feel about cranberries, grapes and cannabis….more hummmmm as I scratch my head!