An Autumn Cranberry Farm Tour
What do you get when you cross (1) a family-run cranberry farm that canceled its farm tours for three years due to COVID and (2) the inquiring minds of members of the NW Bay Probus Club?
The answer: Thirteen eager Probus members at the farm’s doors on a sunny Tuesday morning.
Ted, our tour-master, admitted to being a little rusty, but he soon found second gear and regaled us with the little known art and science of planting, harvesting and selling these lowly berries.
A sample of things we learned:
- They do not grow on bushes, but on low plants that barely reach higher than a few inches from the ground;
- They do not grow in water (the fields are only flooded so the berries can be harvested);
- Apparently, the only beings that eat cranberries are humans;
- A red cranberry has the same properties and taste as a white cranberry. It’s just that red cranberries look more ‘festive’ for the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner tables. It’s a cultural thing.
- Most of us sampled a raw cranberry and found it bitterly refreshing. Honestly! Some went back for seconds. Some did not ….
- The equipment and processes are relatively crude compared with high-tech industrial agriculture, but this farm of just a few acres produces around 200,000 pounds of fruit annually.
The tour ended with a sampling of their diverse farm-made products.
And of course, many NW Bay Probus Club out-and-abouts finish at a restaurant or pub. So off we went to the Crow and Gate Pub just a few kilometers down the road. It was our turn to find second gear, as we switched from cranberries to the excellent fare of this well-known Pub.