Harvest season begins on Wisconsin cranberry farms
The farm welcomed members of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection Board for a tour Sept. 17, during which board members saw cranberries being stripped off the vines, floating in the marshes prior to harvest and loaded from the water into wagons and processed at the company’s on-farm processing plant.
The harvest is underway on white cranberries and some newer varieties on the farm.
Cranberry Creek was chosen as a tour location because DATCP Board member Nicole Hanson is the plant health manager at the farm.
Company owner Bill Hatch said the farm was founded by his father, another Bill, in 1984. The younger Bill joined his father in the operation in 1990. The farm has continued to expand over the years and now includes about 800 acres of cranberry marshes, making it the largest cranberry farm in Wisconsin.
“We have a great bunch of people who have helped build this business over the years,” Hatch said. “We’re pretty proud of it. We have 12 full-time year-round employees and between them there are about 14 kids under the age of 12. When you get out in rural Wisconsin sometimes, we tend to send our kids off to the university to get an education and there’s no place for them to work in the area (when they graduate). We have a great number of people working for us, and they’re all local. Grandma and grandpa and the kids are all here. It’s a neat thing to see.”
Cranberry Creek collaborates with researchers from UW-Madison and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on genetic improvement projects on the farm.
“We have test plots on the marsh, and every year (the researchers) see which varieties look good,” Hatch said. “Then they start ramping them up and plant them into a larger area and keep an eye on them for a few more years. When you get enough vines then you can do a whole bed.”
Hatch said it’s a big decision for a grower to tear up an old cranberry bed that might still be productive in favour of a new variety that won’t be in full production for five years.
Tom Lochner, executive director of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association, said the average cranberry bed in Wisconsin is nearly 40 years old.
Hatch said he looks for his least productive beds to tear out and replant with new varieties.
Wisconsin is the U.S. leader in cranberry production, producing 65 percent of the nation’s cranberries in 2013, when the per-acre average was 290 barrels.
Production is expected to be a little lower this year, Lochner said, at about 250 barrels per acre. A barrel weighs about 100 pounds.
Cranberry prices for independent growers have been depressed in recent months with supply exceeding demand, Lochner said.
Independent growers are receiving between 8 and 20 cents per pound for their berries, while growers who have contracts with Ocean Spray are receiving as much as 50 cents per pound, Lochner said.
About 65 percent of Wisconsin’s cranberries are processed by Ocean Spray and 35 percent are marketed independently, he said.
Wisconsin surpassed Massachusetts as the nation’s top cranberry producer about 20 years ago, Lochner said.
“Our growers here reinvest in their marshes,” he said. “Our average yields compared to Massachusetts are pretty much double per acre. We have more acres and a lot more productive growers who put money into new vines and varieties.”
The state has about 270 cranberry farms.
Growers in Massachusetts generally have smaller operations and struggle for access to land and water, Lochner said.
The biggest area of growth in cranberries in North America is in Quebec, Canada, Lochner said.
“They will probably pass Massachusetts in production in the next year or two,” he said. “That industry was nonexistent there 15 years ago.”
About 95 percent of Wisconsin’s cranberries are processed and 5 percent are consumed as fresh fruit. Processed cranberries are exported around the globe.
“The idea is to sell them the fruit, not the vines,” Lochner said. About one-third of Wisconsin cranberries are exported.
Hatch said the harvest began on their farm on Sept. 8 with white varieties and was followed during the week of Sept. 15 with early red varieties.
Cranberries usually aren’t harvested until about Oct. 1, but new earlier varieties developed by UW-Madison have helped spread out the harvest season, Hatch said.
Harvest will get going full speed ahead — at about 40 acres per day — about the second week of October, Hatch said.
Cranberry Creek had already “frost-protected” its 800 acres of cranberries five nights as of Sept. 17, Hatch said. If the temperature gets down to 33 degrees the irrigation system kicks in to sprinkle the cranberries with water and keep them from being damaged by frost.
“As long as we’re sprinkling them they won’t freeze,” he said.
Hatch said new technology makes it possible for his farm to keep track of where every cranberry it grows is consumed.
All the buildings at Cranberry Creek were destroyed in a May 22, 2011, tornado.
“It happened at 10 minutes to 6, about the same time as the tornado in Joplin, Missouri,” Hatch said. “By the next morning at 10 o’clock we probably had 100 volunteers here cleaning up the mess. We pretty much had the mess cleaned up in a couple weeks and started rebuilding. We were up and running a week before harvest.”
Lochner said friends and neighbours pitched in to help Hatch because he would have done the same for others.
“If somebody’s got a problem (the Hatches) are always the first ones to respond,” Lochner said. “People came to help and they brought end loaders and bulldozers and trucks. It was pretty incredible.”
Source: thecountrytoday.com
