Cooler Weather Contributes to Early Cranberry Harvest

The cranberry harvest has begun early this year at A.D. Makepeace in Wareham, Massachusetts. Cooler weather has raised expectations of a good harvest this season, according to A.D. Makepeace Vice President of Marketing and Communication Linda Burke.

This early start could enable the harvest to be completed a few weeks ahead of the usual late October to early November schedule.

Recent cooler nights have improved berry color, preventing the lighter, yellowish-white hue caused by insufficient sun exposure under the vine canopy, explained Burke in a statement shared with the Wareham Week.

Despite a recent drought warning in the Wareham area, the farm's water management system allows staff to efficiently drain and move water between bogs, helping to conserve water resources and mitigate the effects of drought.

A.D. Makepeace, which has cultivated cranberry bogs in Carver, Plymouth, and Wareham for more than a century, is one of the world's largest cranberry growers.

Harvesting the cranberries involves a two-stage flooding process. First, a machine knocks the berries off the vines. The 1,600-acre bog network is then flooded to about 6 inches to float the berries. The bogs are then flooded again to between 2.5 and 3 feet.  Workers use plastic booms to gather the berries before feeding them into a conveyor belt, which separates the cranberries from any debris that has collected during the flooding process.

After harvesting, the berries are transported to the Ocean Spray processing center in Carver for storage and processing.

Burke noted that much of the farm's labor during the harvest involves seasonal workers who return year after year.

“We go through a company that provides us with seasonal workers, and they're not all migrants. Some follow the blueberry harvest and then come down here,” she shared with the Wareham Week. “A lot of the guys that people see on our bogs have been doing this for years.”