Cranberries are a sure sign of fall.
Like grapes, cranberries are finicky and require patience. Their vines take as many as five years before they produce, and, contrary to popular belief, are not cultivated in water but in irrigated sand marshes that are flooded for harvesting.
“They don’t like dry conditions, but they don’t like having their feet wet all the time, either,” said Mike Simon of North Tomah Cranberry Co., the Rezin family’s fourth-generation Wisconsin operation, about three hours southeast of the Twin Cities. Simon’s wife, Teresa, is the great-granddaughter of the farm’s founder; the couple work alongside Teresa’s parents, John and Joy, and her brother Jeff.
The harvest of the 2011 cranberry crop on Washington’s Long Beach Peninsula occurred in early October.
Each year, growers near Seaview flood their cranberry bogs, then use machines to knock the berries into the water, where they float until being suctioned into trucks for delivery to processing centers.