Great Escape: Cranberries!

On Wednesday, educator Anne-Marie led a curious group of Great Escapers to Double Trouble State Park in Bayville, NJ. The park is home to Double Trouble Historic Village, once a small cranberry growing and packing village. The group was met by Andrew, a historian for the park. With his guidance, the group was given a glimpse of past lives from the intense labor of working the bogs, to the sorting and packing process, as well as life in general in the village. Several of the buildings have been preserved, including living quarters, a school house, the saw mill (cedar was also harvested here) and the packing plant. Inside the packing plant are all the tools and machinery that were used when the village was active. There are still bogs on site which produce cranberries that are used for sauce or dried cranberry products.

After the village tour and the education of how cranberry bogs were worked in the past was a trip a few miles away to active, modern cranberry bogs. The harvest at Double Trouble Historic Village was finished on Tuesday, but the harvest was at its peak in the modern bogs. All stages of the harvest were seen - a bog that had berries but wasn't harvested yet, a bog that was just being flood, a bog that was partially flooding with the machines working to knock the berries off the vines, and a bog that was fully flood with berries knocked off the vines, rounded up and being pumped into a processing truck.

A common question of cranberry harvest is "Do cranberries really grow under water?" Cranberries grow on vines and produce delicate flowers that turn into the berries. All fo the vines are planted to grow in the same director for easier harvesting. Once the berries are ready, the bog, a large square depression in the ground, must be flooded. It is first flood with 1-2 feet of water so that the "knockers" or "beater" machines can begin knocking the berries off the vines. These are tractors with rotating metal loops on the front of the tractor. After the knockers have gone through the bog, it is fully flooded and the berries are gathered. Cranberry harvests can happen in a matter of days, so there was very fortunate timing with this trip!