Once again, I am about a month late with this post. The annual Cranberry Festival was held in mid-October. There were cranberry sales, a craft show, cranberry food items for sale, and my favorite event, a cranberry harvest demonstration.
Washington State University maintains cranberry test fields in Long Beach and this is where the demonstration took place. All throughout the Long Beach peninsula there are cranberry fields owned and harvested by farmers who are members of a cranberry co-op which is connected with Ocean Spray.
At the museum, the demonstration showed wet harvesting of cranberries. First, the cranberry field is flooded with water.
That loosens the cranberries from their vines so that they can be harvested.
The cranberries are pushed up and onto a conveyor belt where they are loaded into a truck.
The debris goes into a big pile by the side of the conveyor.
Here’s a picture of one of the test fields.
The cranberry museum and gift shop is open year-round.
The first time I ever saw cranberry bogs was when I visited Cape Cod in 1976. Little did I know that I would eventually be spending a lot of time on the Pacific Northwest coast where cranberries are a big business!
