On a moist October day, so muted by mist that pond and sky blend seamlessly at the horizon, crews at Wetherby Cranberry Co. in Warrens, Wis., hasten the harvest. In three or four days, they’ll finish the job begun Sept. 20, when the first berries came off the low-growing vines.
Nodji VanWychen, who has owned Wetherby with her husband, Jim, since 1973, seems pleased with this year’s harvest. The VanWychens, their three daughters and sons-in-law, and their son all work on the marshes, though not all work there full-time. During the harvest, seasonal employees pitch in.
Because more than 85 percent of all the cranberries grown in the U.S. end up as juice or dried berries, the VanWychens are definitely in the minority among cranberry growers.
They always have specialized in fresh fruit, selling most of their crop in the upper Midwest. The decision to grow for the fresh market is driven partly by tradition. Wetherby began to build its reputation on the quality of its fresh berries in 1905. But, Nodji said, the decision requires special harvesting equipment — machines that gently rake the ripe berries from the 12-inch tall vines in dry harvesting, rather than beating the berries off the vines as in wet harvesting.
Berries for processing are harvested in flooded bogs, with cranberries floating inside a little corral.
Sounds like a postcard from Cape Cod, doesn’t it?
Though most of us associate cranberries with New England and the holidays, we might more rightly think of Wisconsin all year round. Wisconsin’s 275 growers have grown more cranberries than anyone else for more than a decade. This year’s crop was expected to be especially big, more than 3.5 million 100-pound barrels, according to the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Cranberries top Wisconsin’s fruit production, and Wisconsin legislators made the cranberry the state’s official fruit last April, after fourth-graders proposed the idea.
