Don't forget the sauce
What's It Wednesday
Don’t forget the sauce…
ACHC #1940.157.1, cranberry rake
It’s Thanksgiving!
Cranberries are everywhere - sauces, pies, salads, cocktails. Americans eat about 80 million pounds of cranberries every year during the week of Thanksgiving. That’s 20% of the US’s yearly consumption.
Cranberries are one of only three fruits native to the Massachusetts. Massachusetts is the oldest cranberry growing region in the US.
The Wampanoag People of southeastern Massachusetts harvested wild cranberries for 12,000 years. Cranberries were used as medicine, dyes, and food. They were mixed with dried meat or fish and tallow, and dried in the sun, to make pemmican.
The cranberry is like bog berries found in Europe and England, so the berries would not have been completely unfamiliar to European settlers. Early settlers called the fruit "craneberry" because the flower cranberry flower bud looks like the head of a crane.
We have Henry Hall, a Revolutionary War veteran who lived in North Dennis on Cape Cod, to thank for the first cultivation of the wild cranberry. He noted that the most vigorously growing vines were those that were covered by wind-blown dune sand. In 1816, Hall began transplanting cranberry vines and spreading sand on them. The vines flourished. By 1820, he was shipping cranberries to Boston and New York City. Others quickly copied Hall's technique. Soon cranberries were being grown throughout the state.
Cranberries need acidic soil, with gravel, clay, soil and sand layers to thrive. In Andover, families living around the Skug River in the southern part of Andover, had just the right soil conditions. They dug culverts and dammed wetlands to create cranberry bogs. On their property at what is now 8 Douglass Lane, the Jenkins and Pettigrew families grew cranberries, for the Ocean Spray company, well into the 20th century.
ACHC #1988.025.9, harvesting cranberries by hand in Andover
Initially, harvesting of cranberries was done by picking the berries by hand. Then, around the 1880’s, cranberry rakes and scoops were designed. With rakes, pickers could easily comb the vines and pull off berries. Our scoop, made by Henry F. Glover of West Dedham, MA, was used on the Gray Farm at 232 Salem St. Scoops made harvesting a little easier but damaged the vines. Dry harvesting with scoops continued to the 1940s. Then mechanized harvesting was used.
Wet harvesting, the flooding of the bogs to harvest the floating berries, first originated in Wisconsin. It wasn’t practiced much in Massachusetts until the 1960s. Although easier on the vines, wet-harvested cranberries spoil quickly and so aren’t sold as fresh berries.
Today, 90% of the state’s growers use wet harvesting. Most of Massachusetts cranberries end up as canned sauce, dried cranberries and juice, courtesy of Ocean Spray. It is the state’s largest food crop and a $65 million business.
When you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, enjoy the cranberries. How do you like your cranberries?