My morning run takes me through the dense woods along the Herring River
to where the forest opens up on the Salt Pond Wildlife Sanctuary. The early
mist floats over the cranberry bog like a translucent gray shroud. Pale
sunlight pierces the wispy vapors like a slashing blade in some places and bounces
off bright and sharp as a laser in others. We visit these bogs
throughout the four seasons of the year and watch as the green cranberries bud
in the spring, fatten into plump red berries throughout the summer and are
harvested in the fall. In winter we ice skate above them. Here on Cape
Cod, cranberries have been an important part of the scene since man
first arrived after the last ice age.
Vaccinium macrocarpon, the American Cranberry, one of three fruits
native to North America (along with the Concord grape and blueberry) has over
one hundred varieties and is the state berry of Massachusetts. On Cape
Cod, two varieties are harvested commercially, the Early Black which is
dark purple in color and is harvested in September, and the Later Howes that
is larger, lighter in color and matures in October. Together, these
varieties make Massachusetts the largest producer of the fruit, and account for
over two million barrels per year representing over 13,000 acres of production
and over $100 million in sales.
There is some uncertainty as to the exact derivation of the name
cranberry. One likely candidate is the English "Crane berry,"
resulting from the fact that the stamens of the plant resemble the beak of a
crane. Other theories include the german "Kraanbere," or the
Dutch, "Kranebere." All of these share the association with
cranes, a bird that I can testify are attracted to cranberry bogs, even though
they don't appear to actually eat the berries.
The earliest residents of the Cape enjoyed the cranberry as a food and used
it to make dyes for their clothes as well as medicines. When the pilgrims
arrived from England, the cranberry was one of the local foods available for the
taking. In 1677, Cape Cod cranberries were sent to King Charles
with three thousand codfish, and two hogsheads of corn as part of a token apology
when the wayward colonists minted their own "Pine Tree" shillings
without his permission. Cranberries mixed with venison and suet to make
pemmican, was a
long lasting high energy food rich in vitamin C. The explorer Robert Peary and his assistant, a young black man named Matthew Henson, took a supply of
pemmican on their historic journey to the North Pole in 1909.
In the early 1800's, Henry Hall of Dennis noticed that the cranberry vines
growing in the swampy area of his farm actually produced more fruit than those
in the uplands. He began to experiment to find the optimum conditions, and
as his harvest grew, his brother, Isaiah Hall started a cooperage to provide
barrels for packaging the harvest. The barrels produced by Hall became the
official measure of the cranberry harvest and are still used today. The
cranberry harvest grew into a major agricultural industry in Massachusetts
around 1850 when Cyrus Calhoon planted his first quarter acre bog in Harwich and
found a good market for his harvest. Another cranberry pioneer, Captain
Abiathar Doane, also of Harwich, Massachusetts, found that the yield could be
further increased by planting the cranberry vines close together. Abel
Makepeace of West Barnstable crossbred different strains of cranberry to
further increase the yield and quality of the vines and earned the title,
"Cranberry King." A cranberry bog normally takes about three
years to begin producing a commercial harvest. Once in production, a
properly cared for bog can produce fruit almost indefinitely.
The local cranberry bogs are low swampy rectangles about a hundred meters in
length and perhaps 30 meters in width. A trench is cut around the
perimeter of the bog and several others typically traverse the rectangle.
The cranberry vines grow in a tight low mass in the sandy soil. The bogs usually
have access to a nearby pond for flooding with an inlet at one end and an outlet
at the other for draining the bog. The cranberry bog is flooded in late fall for the "wet
harvest." During wet harvesting,
the bog is flooded to a few inches above the cranberry vines, then a
harvesting machine with balloon tires, so as to not harm the vines, is driven
above using a giant waterwheel device called an eggbeater to create turbulence
and shake the berries loose from the vines. The buoyant berries float to
the surface due to the four buoyant chambers in the fruit. The floating
berries are then skimmed to the side of the bog for harvesting. The wet harvesting
technique accounts for about 75% of the modern cranberry harvest of almost five
million barrels per year, or about 200 billion berries.
The quality of the harvested cranberries is measured by their "bounceability."
According to Cape Cod legend John "PegLeg" Webb discovered this
characteristic when an accident in his barn caused a large number of cranberries
to be dropped on the floor. He noticed that some of the berries bounced
off of the hardwood floors while others didn't. When he realized that the ones
that hadn't bounced were inferior or spoiled, the bounce test was born.
Modern cranberry separators test the quality of newly harvested berries using as
set of seven four inch hurdles. The highest quality berries bounce over
the first hurdle, and end up as fresh fruit. Lower quality berries clear
the later barriers and are sold for juice or sauces.
In recent years, the local cranberry harvest has become a source of
controversy here in Falmouth. In the early 1990's a chemical plume from
the Otis Air Force base contaminated the groundwater beneath several cranberry
bogs, rendering them unusable for several years. More recently, complaints
about the fertilizers and pesticides used by the cranberry growers has forced
the town of Falmouth to reevaluate whether or not they will continue to lease the town-owned
bogs to commercial cranberry growers. The growers maintain that the
chemicals they use are all fully approved by the State EPA, and due to their
limited and fast acting nature cause no harm to the environment.
Jogging through the mist around the edge of the bog brings me to the
rusty iron gate at the end of the road. As I duck under the bar I find
myself almost nose to beak with a Snowy Egret perched on the edge of the
bog like Gandalf the Grey. The spindly bird is staring directly into the sun and seems a little
stunned at first as I step towards him. We look each other in the eye,
sharing a moment of surprise, then he extends his muscular white wings and
begins beating the mist into turbulent swirls as he rises slowly above the
cranberry vines and flies towards the sea.
More Cranberry Information
The Cranberry Institute: http://www.cranberryinstitute.org/
The American Cranberry: http://www.library.wisc.edu/guides/agnic/cranberry/cranhome.html