How Cranberries are Grown

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Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Global Stewardship Podcast. Like several of the episodes recently, this one is a little different than normal. I have a friend on the show today. Her name is Heidi Slyman. She is a cranberry grower through the Ocean Spray Cooperative. She's giving us a full rundown of what it looks like to be a cranberry grower, particularly in the world of Ocean Spray. But as you'll hear. I have her really on the show, first of all, because I know her personally. I do think she's one of the very best cranberry growers in the world, but also because her family has a unique story. I hope you enjoy this episode. I think it's one of the most fascinating just because so many people are unfamiliar with cranberries, with cranberry growing what the fields even look like. And so that being said, please do not miss out. You will not. Capture picture, this whole story. If you don't go to my social media and view the photos and videos and clips that I took from all of my time at Heidi's farm. It has been a long-term dream of mine to have her on a show like this. I have been dreaming this up long before I ever had a podcast, and so I really just wanted to have her on the show to where it almost felt like how it would feel if you were there with her in person having a cranberry tour. As with a lot of the topics that we cover on here, there is a lot of nuance to farming practices, to the food systems that we operate in. But that being said, cranberries is a unique story. I hope that you listen until the end. And thank you again so much to Heidi for coming on the show.

Audio Only - All Participants 1:41

Your family is, I think, uniquely set apart in the cranberry world because you have just such. A deep history in cranberries. Can you give a brief overview about all that for people who may not be familiar? Sure. So I'm a generational cranberry grower, Hannah, and oftentimes when you ask someone from Wisconsin, uh, how many generations are you? It's a big deal because a lot of families in the cranberry industry have been growing cranberries since the 18 hundreds here. Uh, I like to start off by saying that cranberries are native to North America. So they're very old. They're as old as the coming out of the ice age. So thanks to the, the first Nations who understood the value of cranberries and how they played into our history really benefited our family And like, um, I guess. What I like to see is like the traditional American story. There's love and there's tragedy in our family. So we came into the cranberry, um, uh, business in 1876. We as in the Gainer brothers, so our family actually does not have a blood relation to the gainer brothers. And I'll explain that in a second. Mm-hmm. But I would be remiss if I didn't talk about what generation I am without bringing up the Gainor family. So they immigrated here from Ireland after hard times, like many immigrants in the 18 hundreds. This is mid 18 hundreds. Uh, they left because of famine, um, poor growing conditions, poor economic conditions, and a better life. So they came here for stability and on a gamble, because really no one really knew what they were embarking on. They only heard word. So the word on the street was, is that, uh, Wisconsin was open for business and, um, forward thinking, and they understood that they wanted to be able to invite. All the different immigrant families coming, um, to America because we had plenty of land to farm. So, uh, there was a good understanding that, um, cranberries were like the gold rush in Wisconsin. Yeah. And, uh, a handful of people were coming up to secure that land. Um, but at the time it wasn't like anyone could just buy a parcel of land. You had to, um, have some economy of scale. So when farms were being bought up, they weren't really farms at the time, it was just native natural growing cranberry vines in a wooded area. Um, so they just bought these very large parcels and then, um, handpicked cranberries. So from the mid 18 hundreds where we were first shown the value of cranberries and traded them and used them for medicinal purposes, and then eventually became part of our food system, um, that prompted a whole different. Mindset and motivations of how we farmed the cranberries. So you'll start to see the word cultivated. Um, when you start to see Wisconsin cranberries start to take root in a way that had never been done before. So they were always natively grown and natively picked in their season. And when the gainer brothers came with a handful of other of my neighbors, they decided, well, we have this vested interest in cranberries. We wanna make sure that we get the most out of our harvest. So at this point now we're looking at different evolutions of technology and different scientific, um, growing practices. In other words, how can we protect them against the weather and frost and things like that so that we're not losing any of the profit margins. So that's 25 years of growing cranberries. So from 1876, um, so this year's our hundred and 50th anniversary, we're really, really excited to celebrate that. Awesome. Um, in the first 25 years, you are gonna see a lot of, um, cranberries being sold as fresh fruit. And when it's sold as fresh fruit, um, and you have this high motivation to maximize your profits, you are now in a position where you can hire local workforce and, get as many berries picked as possible. So that's what's gonna make you some money. So this is where my family comes into play, and I'm not saying that we're the only family that, evolved into, uh, cranberry history, but, um mm-hmm. I, it's not a common story. So my great-grandfather. Came here with his mother. So when I think about the generations, it's the Gayer Brothers. And then 25 years later, it's Carolyn Dempsey. And she comes here because she's a widow and she needs to work because she has to be able to provide for her three young children, the oldest being 10 years old. So she brings her three young children to work to gain her cranberry. She's German, she does not speak English very well. And, she works here during the week and then walks or gets, a buggy ride back to town with 20 miles away, you know, does church and grocery shopping, and gets meal preparations done on the weekends, and then comes back so that over the course of the years she ended up living here because her children. And this was long before. Child labor laws like, so this is the golden era, right? The gilded age of North America. Queen Victoria is still in power, you know, in making her stamp on the world. So there's a lot of this global. Footprint happening, and there's a lot of, you know, in Wisconsin, how does that translate? A lot of railroads. Mm-hmm. A lot of roads being built. Um, so she had access to work, but, um, no one told her she couldn't bring her, her children to work. And, um, thank God, because I was able to bring my kids to work. So it's not a bad thing, but, for her it was a means to an end. So Charles Dempsey, this little boy became this like shadow, if you will, to the gainer brothers. So one gainer brother was more of like the business mind and he understood law and he was a judge. And then he helped build our, our trade system. So we have labels that we put on our boxes and on our barrels. Originally they were sold in barrels. We'll get to that in a second. Mm-hmm. And he came up with the system so that we were getting paid a fair rate for the berries that you were buying. And then the other brother was more of the scientists and the farmer and, the engineer, he was the one really like farming the farm. So Charles Dempsey was shadowing him. So here comes the tragedy story, if we haven't already been saddened by Carolyn Dempsey's, you know, story of being a widow, the Gayer brothers. Ended up passing away. And so did their children before they had a succession plan. Mm-hmm. So the only living error was Mrs. Gainor. So when the bank, 'cause we were not part of like this gold rush or, or East Coast money or things like that. So we owed the bank some money and the bank said, you need to have, you need to name someone. And let's remember even if there were daughters, that the gainers had, I think there was more than one child. But the way I understand it, no children survived or were eligible. Yeah. So think about that. Women couldn't even buy. Land and put their name on a deed until the 1970s, you couldn't have a credit card until the 1970s. Mm-hmm. So there's no way the bank's gonna allow Mrs. Gainor, um, to even put her own name on it. So they ended up circling back to Charles Dempsey, who's now in his twenties. He's a grown man, he's married, and they say, would you be willing to take on this farm? So that's where my family entered into Gainer Cranberry. Wow. So I always felt bad that I didn't include Carolyn. I mean, really it was her footprint. That brought her family here out of a means to an end, and he didn't. The way I like to emphasize Charles Dempsey is he had a choice. I mean, not maybe in the beginning, um, but as he became an adult man, this is a paper town that I live in. So we're very agricultural centric and we grow a lot of trees here. So, and we also we're a river town, so rivers and trees hand in hand. This is what you do in Europe. This is what you do here. And so the paper industry was huge. He easily could have, gone to work in a different, um, line of, of agriculture and he chose not to. So I think agriculture is something that you don't have to be born into. It is something that. I treasure. But, um, you know, I'll be honest with you, my, my mother shares a similar story, to Carolyn. She became my mom young and, when she met my stepdad, he embraced my twin sister and I, and I've never known anything other than my cranberry I identity. But I wasn't necessarily born into it. So I think that's always stuck with me a little bit, Hannah, because I do see a lot of pride for generational farmers and for the, the farmers who have, you know, a stake in the land and those who are of us, who are caretaking for the land. But it's not just the owners, it's their crew. It's, you know, too, I didn't wear my egg force. Um, I have a a t-shirt that we designed with my nonprofit and it's called Egg Force, kinda a playoff of workforce. Mm-hmm. Because I just felt that when we do talk about workforce, it's something really important to me. We can't grow these, these cranberries don't grow on their own even though they're perennial and they're on a vine and they'll naturally produce year after year after year. They're not at their best without help. I'm sport orientated and I love soccer. Women's soccer's like my favorite thing to do when I'm not farming. And so I think of our team building, I think of how would I build my team like a soccer team. You have your offense, you have your defense, but essentially you're building your team on your skills. And that's a challenge because you have to love being, working outside and working with the elements and working with the unknown. But at the end of the day, we all have these natural gravitation to talents and skills. So then how do you build a, a team for your farm when you need everybody to do everything? But that's not necessarily true. So then it's been something in the back of my mind is how do I nurture and create this identity for, for cranberry growing because like my great-grandfather. He wasn't born into it. He didn't have to do it. But what was it about that that made him so passionate to want to return, even though it's really hard work? Sure. And so that's something I've been trying to study and figure out after all this time is, you know, when we look at generational farms, what does it mean to be sustainable? What does it mean to have that success? To be able to move it forward from one generation to the next? You know, clearly you need to have a demand. Someone asked me the other day, what is the bus biggest risk that you see as a cranberry grower, in your, in your farming world? And I mean, there's a lot of like red flags that go off right away. 'Cause when we grow, anyone who's in farming, you're either growing or you're protecting what you're growing, but you're, and you're doing it both at the same time. But at the end of the day, if you don't have a demand, if you don't have people wanting to eat what you're growing or what you're producing, it means nothing. Mm-hmm. Um, so I, that's something in the back of my mind too, is how can we show the world how cranberries are so great and why it's a great, industry to work in and how we can make it relatable to the consumer? And I get a little, I guess you could call it arrogant. I like to call it, pride for my family farm, but I think cranberries are such a symbol of agriculture because they're directly tied to the history of our nation. Yeah. They're tied to the Thanksgiving story, they're tied to, um, our First Nations. They are tied to survival. Um, I've done some presentations where I try to overlay. Like a Venn diagram. I've tried to overlay the characteristics of cranberry farming and growing and that of leadership. And it's very similar. You have your self preservation, you're trying to produce something for yourself. You're trying to protect yourself while you're producing something. Um, you've got this grit. You've got your passion, but you have to accept what you have. You know what the controllables, so what can you control? What can't you control? Um, and I think cranberries have a great story because they have this connection to the land and the connection to people that is age old. Yeah. So if you were to ask me, you know, could cranberries be the national fruit? Well, yes, I think we could. Um, I've, I've even looked into it now. Do you wanna know what the national fruit is for USA? Oh gosh, I don't even know. It's the blueberry and good, good blueberry. At least it's the blueberry. Yeah, it's like a nice, sweet, cute cousin to the cranberry. Um, probably equally impactful, right? Mm-hmm. High nutrition traded, same growing season. Um, it's a forged fruit, you know, so it's, it has all of the bells and whistles, but, um, they don't talk about blueberries at Thanksgiving. Yeah. That's funny. I love it. I love the historical elements of this. I remember when I was at y'all's place. In your big history room, there's all kinds of stuff in there. And you kind of touched on some of it. One thing I thought was fascinating, you had the books full of the old cranberry records when they were starting to transform it from wild forage berries to something to grow at scale. I have this picture in my mind always that I think about they had stamped half cut cranberries in there to show the size and the color Yeah. And all those different things. I would love to kind of hear more about that, maybe the coolest things that you have in that room. But then also. There are so many cranberry brands and labels at that time. Like all of the memorabilia in there has all of these different labels that don't exist today. Could you help us understand what was going on then, and then how it's now transformed. Basically like the one brand that everybody sees and knows and loves, like that was a huge change. Yeah, so this is a huge part of our family history as well. We absolutely have a hand footprint thumbprint on the historical pathway of the cranberry from being freshly foraged and traded and sold you know, direct, someone coming out, getting a whole bucket or pale and then literally going to like America's first. You know, market, you know, down by the river kind of thing. Yeah. Um, so when the gamer brothers started, cultivating cranberries with the rest of our neighbors, they were essentially doing the same, taking their crop. And somewhere along the way someone discovered or determined that they were gonna use a barrel to distribute the fruit. So the barrel was designed in a way that it had the exact measurement of a hundred pounds. So you fill it up from bottom to top, put a cover on it. That would be the standard selling unit. They, um, understood that that was the framework for selling. Mm-hmm. So when you sell your fruit in these hundred. Barrels, these buyers from Chicago would come up and give what we discovered unfair pricing. So, and maybe they were equally confused what would differentiate a cranberry price point, from one to another. So the gainer brothers worked with Wisconsin growers and said, look, we're gonna sell Wisconsin cranberries different than what you see on the East Coast, and we're gonna come up with their own metric, our Rubiks, if you will. And so we're gonna sort, it's the original sorter of cranberries. So they decided to sort cranberries using grids and crates to, separate the berries out by their size. So they had different sizing capacities to sort out the cranberries. Hmm. Then they might have been sorting out the cranberries based on a color like a really rich red versus all the way down to a pink. So depending on what color they were sorting for, they may have taken those berries out. Now we understood that at this time in the 18 hundreds, people in America knew what cranberries were there. There's a demand for it. That's why people are wanting to come and buy this land. But they didn't understand that cranberries grew white. They must have been sorted out long before we started trading. Cranberries. White cranberries are equally the same as red. Actually here. This cute little, this is really old. This is from the summer. Berries grow right on these little flowers. These are uprights and these little berries grow in these uprights. Now let me show you a, um, the vine that they grow on. So this is a vine, and these cranberries, they, they grow tall and straight. So if you're on the bottom, you're not gonna see the sun as opposed to if you're the berries on the top. So this is, um, a baby vine. But when, you have a really thick canopy, all of a sudden the berries on the top are gonna get all of the sun and the berries on the bottom are not gonna get as much sun. So they have all the same nutrients, they just don't have the sun exposure. Interesting. So anyways, we thought it was a good idea to sort out the white berries because you want an abundant bowl or basket of red. So we would sort out by size. We would sort out by color, we would sort out by keeping quality. So then in this history book, um, that we have, we have it charted, in columns and rows, depending on when they were picked. It would all be marked. We would take the stamps, so the berry would be cut in half, um, dipped in probably its own ink, and then stamped it right into the book. So then we could see the different sizes. We could see the, formation of the hollow pockets on the inside. We were testing for the vitality of the cranberry, so it's robustness, when it went into blossom and when it would be ready for harvest. So then we could understand the growing intervals. So then. Back to these labels that you mentioned. They would either be round to cover the barrel or they would be rectangle. So eventually we understood, hey, a hundred barrels is really hard to ship on a railroad car that's square. Why don't we put them in 25 barrel boxes instead of, round barrels. So that became a little bit easier, but either way, we would put the labels right on the box. So then when the buyers got them, they would know, oh, this is the price for this berry and this is where they should be shipped and stored. So if they had a shorter keeping quality, the distance wasn't traveled very far. Or, maybe like the best berries would be big and red, but maybe pies were really common then. Yeah. So if it was a pie berry, they could have put a big value on a pie berry. But a pie berry doesn't have to be big. Right? It has to be ripe. Yeah. So it'd be interesting to see over time, the different prices that they gave for these different brands. And the brands were very colorful. They would have different, um, artistic expressions on them. So that they stood out to the buyers. I have some pictures from my visit. I'll definitely be sure to post 'em of, of the brands and of what I have of the book. Okay. The books. Books perfect. But yeah, they, you can tell they were from Wisconsin. I mean, there's Berry brand, Fox brand, um, favorite brand, beaver brand. I'm looking at the older ones right in front of me. Monogram in chief. If you were a historian, you would be able to look at the labels and know the age of them because they had an evolution of time, clearly, like as businesses evolve. Mm-hmm. Um, and how they were traded. But it was an a, you know, absolute signature trading system that Wisconsin was able to develop all on their own right from. Right here on this farm. So our, the building that I'm sitting in now used to be the warehouse where we would store the cranberries. So like all other produce in Wisconsin or in the Midwest, we harvest it one time of year. It's a big celebration, which is why we probably celebrate Thanksgiving, right? Everything is hard harvested all at once. But let's not forget they had cellars, right? Uh, the food that they produced all went into cellar to hold them out over the winter. Well, we have the same thing now. They're called cold storage. So it's just an economy of scale now, but they're part of our egg force. You know, we, we think that, the cold storage companies that are able to hold our fruit and give us good prices because. That's part of our operating business now. So you had mentioned Ocean Spray, the big company. So multiple companies, multiple farms would come in and you would get assigned a packer number and then they would be able to have traceability of which berries came from which farm. So even at the early ages of 1800 Cranberry farming, they still had the methods of traceability. But then over time, we recognized that, times were changing and the demand for cranberries was still there, which is wonderful. And I think the primary, source for cranberries was cranberry sauce. Think that was a very natural way for people to use it, bake it, jar it, put it in the cellar, and then you would have it over time. So when you think about the industrial revolution and then what happened on the revolution, not only do you have railroad tracks that are now able to move your, your product, but now we, and we have storage, right? And electricity to make things more efficient. But it was the invention of the aluminum. Can I get so excited about this? The aluminum can gave us the ability to now have a longer shelf life. It no longer has to be cold storage and. Ocean Spray started on the East Coast and there was three owners that said, Hey, we're gonna bring our skills, our talents, and our resources together to create this company. 'cause there's a huge demand for cranberry sauce. Why don't we, can it? Yeah. So Ocean Spray, that's how they became to be a grower cooperative is because they got, they, there was already an existing cooperative of companies here in Wisconsin and also on the East coast that had a framework of growers coming together and selling their fruit. So Ocean Spray said, we're gonna model the same model that you have for a grower own cooperative, but we're gonna give better margins because people are paying more for our canned sauce than they are for your fruit. So very, very quickly, people follow the math and the numbers, and they eventually switch their production from fresh fruit to consumer packaged goods. CPG, that's how we know it today. Mm-hmm. But like everything, including fashion things swing. And we are definitely seeing, now I can speak for Ocean Spray. Our farm is an ocean spray, farm. So we're part of the cooperative. So when I do speak of my cranberry industry, I think of the whole industry. And then I think of the ocean spray industry. And overall there is a demand for fresh fruit and for whole fruit. Um, I think our evolution of how we, what we eat, how we eat, when we eat, what we want to eat, how we mix it into our foods, that's all changing. Yeah. The exciting thing is, is that cranberries still has a place at the table. Yes. Um, and I think we're just looking for different ways to be able to serve it in a way that's appealing. I think the trickiest part is that they're so naturally tart 'cause there is no sugar in them. You know, in order to survive the Ice Age, they had to grow in a really hearty environment. And essentially that hearty environment and that hearty growth allowed them to survive, but without all of those sugar components to make them part of their plant composition. Mm-hmm. So how do we get to consume it if you don't either know how to eat it or if you don't like how it's eaten or how it tastes is the tricky part. And it seems like we know that consumers like cranberries, but after all of this time, we haven't been able to figure out how to make it palatable beyond the way that we've done it. Yeah. So we're always looking for new inventions and new ways to integrate. The Creon is wonderful, but if you're looking, you know, for something that is closer to the fruit at it, at its vine, that's probably not gonna be the product for you. Right. So, um, there is a product out there called Honestly Cranberry, which is a dehydrated type of fruit, which is similar to the Craisin, but it, there is no added sugar whatsoever. Um, so that's really exciting that Ocean Spray, although it's a competitor, ocean Spray, has all our different products that we can offer, um, different taste profiles, different options between, the edibles and the drinkables and things like that. I mean, the Ocean Spray, now you can find us in absolute vodka. They have the, the single Yeah. That are all mixed. So. The world thinks there's only one branded company for, for cranberries, but actually 50% are maybe because we have to be careful there isn't a monopoly, but it's, we're only half Ocean spray is only half, if not less, maybe 40% of the whole world. So there are other companies, I suppose if you look at Amazon, you'll able to find them, but in our world, we call them independent. So you have an ocean spray price point and an independent price point. Mm-hmm. So, people are buying your product, but it may not be labeled or it might be labeled like, um, Mariani is a company that's in my hometown competitor to Ocean Spray. Yeah. But they're known for fruits and nuts, dried fruits and nuts. So they felt like it was really good to add cranberry to their product profile. And I think it was really, really smart. So I love to celebrate agribusinesses that see value in cranberry because we don't have to sell our fruit brand. I know Ocean Spray does have a business strategy that they do have the position to sell. So for example, this is not on purpose. I didn't have lunch today and I found this in my refrigerator. But these Sargento snacks, these are the balance breaks are called, um, it's cheese, nuts and craisins. They call 'em dried cranberries. You can only call 'em craisins if they're branded ocean spray. But these are ocean spray sold Sargento, our craisins. So this could be a cranberry from my, my marsh. That's so cool. You kind of touched on it about cranberries around the world. Can you share where cranberries are around the world? 'cause I know it's not many places. Mm-hmm. Um, so I'm not a scientist. I cannot remember the scientific name, which is so bad that I'm a generational cranberry grow. And I am emphasizing, I don't have the scientific name, but there are a couple of vines out there that grow fruit that look like cranberries and are not cranberries. You're the scientist, you probably know their name, but, of that vine variety that we define, as we define cranberry, they're only grown natively in North America. You can find them in Chile because flip the map upside down. Our growing conditions are very, very similar to parts of Chile. Um, they have been known to be grown in the northeast, um, part of Europe, but it's debatable if it's the same. Vine derivative. So I would like to highlight in North America, it's in Canada, so like Nova Scotia, Eastern Canada, up that way, through Ontario, um, Quebec. And then over into the British Columbia area. So you have the eastern and then the far west, and then in the US it's Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and some Maine. I, I might have missed a little, but you can see it's in that upper along the border. Yeah. You got right along the border there. And so people say, how come they can't grow? If you took the vine and you moved it to Georgia. Mm-hmm. Can you grow it there or could you grow it in a greenhouse? So yes, you could do anything in a greenhouse, you could definitely simulate growth, but it would be high maintenance. 'cause our, our cranberries, I call them sleeping beauties when I talk to all fourth graders. So they have one growing season and then they need to go to sleep. And they go to sleep because they work so hard. And the reason they go to sleep is because in our northern climate, the sun and the temperature cue them to go to sleep, and then during that dormancy they get their rest. So they wouldn't be able to produce that same environment in a warmer climate. They wouldn't understand that's the time for them to go to sleep. And I think they would stay awake. I just don't think they would produce the fruit. They still need that sleep time. Mm-hmm. And that's an easy way for me to describe, how they're a full year. Plant in a animated way that you can visualize. So if there's sleeping beauties in the winter. So what do we do now in the winter? Well, we're always either growing them or protecting them. So right now we're in protection mode. And our sleeping beauties, they get cold, they need a blanket, and they need protection from the harsh winds because they have the bud on the very, very tip. They don't want frozen she's sleeping, but she doesn't want any damage to it. 'cause this is where the growth is in the springtime. Mm-hmm. We'll flood our beds with water. So in Wisconsin we have, access to water. And that's one of the other reasons why they can only grow in certain areas because you need the soil profile and you also need the water access. So we'll bring the water in and flood all over the beds, and then we'll start making ice. So we'll pull the water off and then re flood, pull the water off and re flood. So we're building inches of ice. And then that's essentially, her blanket. Now if we have the luxury. Well, sand. So the sanding is like an extra coating, of protection. And in Wisconsin we have access to sand. Now, in other places you may not have access to sand, so you may have to do other practices, but sanding helps when, you're able to have a frozen bed with ice. And then you put the sand in a dump truck, and then you drive the dump truck onto the bed and you, sift it out, drop it out, and spread it all the way across so you have a nice even layer of sand. So now she's really, really nice, warm and protected. But essentially when the sun melts the snow and the ice in the spring and we pull the water off, that sand will now sift right down. And now we're back to promoting those upright. Vines. 'cause this is where the cranberries are gonna grow. And then sometimes nature, she has a funny sense of humor and she likes to plant nest of pesty bugs right on our cranberry vines. So if we could knock those nest off, then those bugs won't grow. So it's oh, natural way to gently knock off the bugs that we don't want and kind of choke 'em out and then promote upright growth while we're promoting good soil nutrients as well. Wow, that's fascinating. So the sand kind of weighs it down. Yeah. That's cool. So we're self-made meteorologists. They're always watching the weather to make sure it's cold enough. Mm-hmm. Um, we don't want, if it's, if the ice isn't strong, the dump trucks could break the ice and tip the dump truck and things like that. So you only have maybe about six weeks to make your ice and get the sanding done. So it sounds like a long time. But while you're waiting for Mother Nature, um hmm. That can have an impact. And then once things start to melt, just like any other plant, cranberries don't like being under the water, so I would say by April, our pipe is definitely going out and getting, hooked up. Now, either your irrigation pipe is underground or above ground. We have a combination of both. Um, we've learned through technology and from our neighbors that, um, underground pipe is a lot better. Um, it's, it's more efficient and it's labor intensive to take it in and out all the time. So that's a part of our practice. And why? We say, okay, we do need a strong egg force because when it's go time, it's go time. Yeah. Um, so that's April. I keep looking out my window because, we have birds all over the place and eagles never, migrate. They will stay here all winter long. So even though it was like minus 12 the other day, actually we didn't have school on Friday, so it must have been like minus 30 with the wind. Wow. That's crazy. Hey, that's crazy. Um, so they hunker down, but you'll see the birds more often when the water's moving. So if the water's high in the ditches or if we're moving water, you'll de, that's a much higher chance of seeing wildlife. That's beautiful. Yeah. I loved visiting. I thought it was just absolutely gorgeous. I think that a lot of people. When they picture cranberry fields, if they picture anything, they picture them when you're harvesting. 'Cause that's what, ocean Spray or whoever is showing in ads or photos. I know you've started talking about kind of the seasons, but like, how thick is the ice? What does it look like? What does it look like then in the summer and. Kind of the whole year round synopsis for people. Sure. So I would say the ice, you know, I, the, technically I probably should know the answer to this, but I would say, uh, six inches. I mean, it's gotta be thick enough for, um, a dump truck to go on. And that's our general rule of thumb here in Wisconsin is you don't go out on ice unless it, you know, for sure it's four to six inches. Mm-hmm. So if you can imagine, a half a ruler thick of ice, and then there's a pocket of air, so the vines are not entwined in the ice. Somehow we've been able to understand that once we pull the water off, that there's a slight little room of space between the vines. And so we've kind of created a little cave, if you will, like an ice cave. Yeah. That's cool. And then. It can be, depending on how much water you have, it's like an ice skating pond. So imagine like a Hallmark movie and you've got your ice skates and, a hockey puck and you're gonna go play some hockey. You could easily do that on one of our cranberry beds. So our beds are rectangle shaped and I'm gonna use a soccer reference, but it's like the length of a football field or a soccer field, give or take. Some of our beds are bigger, some of them are smaller. But I think for a general frame of reference in Wisconsin, that's what I would use. Mm-hmm. Since we're in football season, um, think of a football field and, you can play hockey all the way up and down. You can also roll, take your four wheeler out and hook up a, a rope in a tube and take the kids out and go tubing. So that's always been like a really fun adventure. Um, we also have really good friends that are really into snowmobiling. They have, three real little girls and their family's like a generational racing family. So you can even do that on, I mean, that's how thick the, the, the ice is. So our average farm is between 100 and 200 acres in Wisconsin. Now you're gonna find a much bigger, much smaller, so you're driving along and you see these one football field after another. And it looks like you could just jump right into them, but remember they need water to get in and out. So as you look at these football fields now, I imagine that you have to step down into them. Mm-hmm. So they're not necessarily level with the ground. They're one rolled ankle away from jumping in and out. So you gotta be kind of careful when you get in and out and we've got some ramps, but you gotta be careful. And, um, around the beds, once the snow melts and it's all fresh in the summer, it's gonna look like, when you go to a river or a stream and there's like really soft grass right before you walk, you put your toes down into the stream and it kind of gets rocky before you get down. It's kind of like that around each of the beds. So we've got grass all the way around these rectangular football fields, and then in the summer. Well, let's slow down. In the springtime, they're burgundy, so our sleeping beauties are still sleeping. And you know that they're waking up when they start to turn their vines from a really burgundy color to a really pretty green. So any of us who live in areas where there's winter to spring and you can start seeing the changes in the trees, especially those evergreens, they go from like really dark to like a pretty light green. Mm-hmm. They kind of do the vines do the same thing. So once you get that mix and you start seeing that green, and you know that they're essentially waking up, you're gonna want irrigation pipe because that's their protector. They're very hardy and sturdy, but they're also really fragile. So our sleeping beauties are waking up. They're ready to work hard, but the one thing they need is don't let me freeze. When you look out into these football fields, you'll see sprinkler heads all, you know, stretched out in a line. So maybe there's two lines of bed, three lines of bed, depending on how wide or narrow it is. And if it's in the summer and you're driving to work and you're like, oh, it's gonna be a great day, you've got your tank top on and the windows are down and it's seven o'clock and it's already feeling great and you still see the sprinklers going, you're like, but it's not cold out. We know they get thirsty too. So we will try to irrigate like your, you would, your garden. You wouldn't necessarily wanna put your high water on at high noon. Yeah, try to scorch him, um, right. Soak 'em in in the morning. Cool 'em off in the morning, and then you wanna cool 'em off in the afternoon. So our irrigation for cooling off could be the same thing in the morning at sunrise and at sunset. Then, um, from spring to summer is when you start hearing the birds come. Now I have to be mindful of this expression. I call it the great migration. I know there's historical context to that in different ways, but what I mean it is that the birds are coming back from all different areas. So did you know that loons migrate to Florida? We researched at one time, well, where do our loons go? Um, 'cause it's, it's always a joy when the loons come back. So we've got loons coming back, but then we have a bunch of birds that will just stop here and then head north to Canada or northern parts of, of Wisconsin. So it's a neat time of year, I would say. You know, like March or April, basically it's when there's open water. I was talking to some older friends and. And I was, they're like, how do you know when it's safe to go on the river? How do you know, you know when winter's coming, like what are your farmer's tails? And I always say, if it's the middle of the winter and you hear a goose, you should be nowhere near water run. And do not go on the ice. Like if there's open water, a goose will find it. So if you're hearing a goose, that means water's moving, it's flowing. She knows it's not just where you live. She can see way far up in the sky, farther than you can. So that's my indicator if there's geese around, um, or swans. So the swans I always say are the first to arrive, last to leave. I don't know what it is about those trumpeter swans, but they are hardy. I mean, they are swimming until they're literally frozen out. And then they decide, well, I think it might be a good time to go now. Yeah. Yeah. That is an interesting indicator. Can you share about the sandhill cranes? Oh goodness. Okay. So the sandhill cranes, how did I forget to bring this up? They are, they for us are a symbol of, life and vitality and beauty in the cranberry world. And we have a personal connection to them because, so remember when I said that cranberries are as old as the ice age and that they have been, forged for as long as. The First Nations understood their value. Yeah. So we know that, native Americans are tribal nations and they all have their own languages. So when you have multiple languages, you're gonna have multiple names for the same thing. And how languages evolve is such a beautiful story in itself. So, one native name might be Atoka and it might be the name of like the berry from the marshland, so then how in the world did you come up with the name Cranberry? So when you think of early settlers coming in to Wisconsin in the 18 hundreds with this immigration rush. I'm sure it's on the east coast as well, but we had German, Dutch, French, Italian, Irish, and Polish. That's a lot of different languages. So, they kind of spoke in ways that they would be able to find connection. And so the early settlers would say, um, you know, that, um, bush berry that has that beautiful pink blossom, and it has this beautiful flower. And it's, and it, it kind of reminds me like the head of a Sandhill crane. So then all of a sudden they started calling it a craneberry because the cranberry blossom resembled the head of a Sandhill crane. So this is, um, in this book, A to Z, um, it's by Ann Kerz Chamber. She's a wonderful artist. She has bot the most beautifully botanically correct cranberry illustrations we've ever seen. You can buy them@cranberrylearning.com. That's our nonprofit. And on the back she of the book, she included this wonderful, um, lifecycle. So the blossoms are only during, a four week window in June. So that is, a very big season for us. Um, a lot of people think, and like you said, we do such a great job at Harvest with the pretty pictures and the, the media and the commercials, but there's so many different parts of our growing season that are, I believe, equally beautiful. And the blossom season is one of them. So if you're looking across these football fields, bed after bed after bed in June, you're gonna see a hue of pink. This really, really soft, like I'm talking like. Baby pink when you go to the store for a baby shower. Yeah, baby pink. And then you hear this buzz because they need to be pollinated. Our beautiful berries, like a lot of other fruit crops, need pollinators. And we do have native pollinators. We are lush with na native, a strong ecosystem, but we just don't have enough pollinators. So then in June you'll see these white boxes or colored boxes all throughout our cranberry farms, and those are be beehives. So that's a big investment for us to make sure that every flower has been touched by a bee to be able to give it its best chance to producing a cranberry. Mm. Very cool. Mm-hmm. So then what comes next after summer? So then once they finish their growth, um, and the lifecycle chart, they get to be, um, ready for harvest. And their color is still green, they don't really get their red color till August. Okay. So we're growing and we're protecting all the way until their harvest time. And then from, I would say from August to, uh, October is when they really start to turn from green to red. So then, you're looking out over the cranberry marsh and you have. Tons of wildlife, by the way. Um, you've gotta make sure the bears don't eat your hives. You've got, plenty of deer. We've got Wolf and Fox and, you know, the, the fun exotics, like the fishers and the minks and the muskrats. And, there's a community nearby that recently released elk. Uh, so you never know what you're gonna see but we're equally watching the temperature gauge. We're constantly watching. We have a, a weather monitor. We're watching those game cams just to see like what's the wildlife doing. If it's a problem with the deer, then we can work with the environmental team to make sure, like we can get, deer fences put up and things like that. And then we're watching their, the growth vitality to make sure that they're not being introduced by bad bugs or by disease. So we do have a team that we've hired, and we call them an integrated pest management team. IPM. So every cranberry grower does IPMI guarantee it because it is detrimental if you don't. So we need to make sure that the cranberries are always healthy and not being, attacked by their enemies. So their enemies could be anything that ease eating their nutrients or eating themselves. Yeah. So we say nobody wants worms in their cranberry and their fruit, so we're gonna make sure that we don't deliver worms to you. So that's a big part of our summer crop protection program is that, so you may see a big tractor with a big arm, it's called a boom, and our beds are just wide enough so he can go, she or she can drive down one time, turn around, and. Come back on the opposite side and then cover both ends of the bed. So we may be putting down fertilizer because our sleeping beauties do get hungry. They are very hungry. So every other week it seems like we're putting some kind of fertilizer program into place. But because they're, because we're fertilizing them, we may be subsequently fertilizing and feeding the sources that we don't wanna feed. Mm-hmm. Like the pesty pests or the weeds and things like that. So if we feel like our integration pest program, integrated pest program is leaning towards, look, you may have, uh, a terrible situation with one of your enemies. Maybe it could be a plant disease, or it could be a bug that not only eats the plant but is eating next year's crop. I mean, that would just be detrimental. So we wanna keep our sleeping beauties healthy. So if that's the case, then we do put a plant into place. When you see our equipment out there, that's what we're doing is just making sure that the plant isn't hurt. We can live within means of some of those pests. We'll never be pest free, but we just wanna make sure that it's not a takeover, an enemy takeover. And then you get into the August, September and now they're really lush. Now the canopy is really thick. The berries are growing. Um, you can walk out on the canopy and you might hear some popping. You have to get in there with them and in order to check on them, and you have to be with them. So there's, part of that is we do take a walk, we will do soil, and tissue sampling. So we wanna know, it's like a report card. Test to us, how did we do, how is the health and vitality of our vines and our cranberries doing? How is the soil doing if the soil is not healthy? Not only are the plants not healthy, but the whole ecosystem isn't healthy. So this is a true measurement report card of what have we done during our farming summer, and how is it reflecting in the plant and in the soil? And then we send it to a independent lab, and then we get this report card. So then we use this data. My sister has been investing in a software program so she can log year by year and track year by year what we're doing so that we don't repeat mistakes or we repeat success or, and what we're really trying to do is repeat successes. So, you know, every year is different because mother nature is different. And how do we mean by that? Will rain? If we get a lot of rain, we're getting a lot of nitrogen. So we may not have to supplement the plant with added nitrogen source because we've already been given it naturally. But if it's a drought year and we haven't had all that rain. Or if it's a, a cold year and not a lot of sun, we may have to do some things that we weren't able to naturally get from another nature, or we may have to mitigate, you know, oh my gosh, that was a lot of nitrogen. How are we gonna make sure, that our plants don't get, you know, too soggy? Um, so we have, not only are we not only watching the tissue in the soil, but we also had a moisture monitor. It's a probe put into the ground and it reads the metrics back to our weather station. So then my sister, who's our crop production manager, and then our marsh manager, are able to read these metrics to say, Hey, look, we don't need to water today. Even though it feels by rhythm, we should, it's 80 degrees and it's sunny out, but maybe it was really high due point that morning and, and we got all that we needed. So we're recognizing when we invest in some of these technologies and basic IPM is taking a net and, um, sweeping for bugs. It's not high technology. It's not, maybe someday we'll have drones and they'll be able to do radar sensing or heat censoring, to be able to find hotpots and. Things like that. And we're working towards it, but at the end of the day too, as much as we're precision farmers, we don't get lost in detail and we try to like keep it simple and yeah. I do have some questions, before I know we'll finish off the year synopsis probably with harvest, but obviously with cranberries being perennial and they're really densely packed in there, mm-hmm. You know, they're not, they're different than a lot of row crops that people might picture that have really wide spaces in between them. Like there's no intercropping, there's no cover cropping 'cause they're there all year round. There's not any crop rotation. Like you can't just fill the bed with something different the next year. So I feel like that kind of offers a lot of unique situations. And I'm wondering a lot of other people's. Solutions can't apply. What other kind of things you guys are as cranberry growers in general? Like, are there any kind of innovations happening? What you may see on the horizon to kind of address some of these things? So you're absolutely right. They are is a long-term relationship that we have with the land. 'cause our cranberries are perennial and they're vines and they're, I guess the closest way I could describe it is like a strawberry vine. But they're much thicker than a strawberry. That's why they often get confused with a bush because it almost appears like you're walking through a bush. We always wanna make sure a couple things that when we do replant, that we're using vines that have integrity. So, being a propagator is really important in, in our industry we only, we recognize the, the value of we wanna keep the vines healthy and genetically sound. So why would you renovate a bed in the first place? Well, maybe. Your bed got sick, maybe. You are recognizing that the bed that you're renovating is 75 years old and it's only producing 200 barrels an acre. But, your neighbor right next door, across the ditch, has the same soil but different fines and he's producing, or she's producing 600 barrels an acre. So you say to yourself, wait a minute. I wanna be able to buy new equipment and I need to be able to ensure that I have insurance for my employees. I need to make, an investment on my investment. So you may say, I'm gonna tear out this bed, so now you're going to use a bulldozer and, or work with like a fire department team and burn out the vines and completely sculpt them off. So couple things with innovation that we think about and for precision farming is how can we get a quicker rate of return from the point of, planting to the point of actually harvesting those berries. So we have learned that you can get a quicker rate of return if you plant plugs, cranberry plugs. So you would get that from a propagator who grew those cranberry plugs in a greenhouse. So they're already established, they already have a root system and they already have buds ready to go. Uh, but those are significantly more expensive. But if you want to speed up your production have the bed fill fill in quicker. That's one way to do it. So in other words, working with greenhouses who can figure out how to grow really good cranberry vines in the plug format is really important. The other thing that we're recognizing, is the precision farming and, and growing. So I did mention drones. That is gonna be a huge, game changer for us when we can have more access to them, training so we can fly them ourselves. Being able to reload them quickly so you're saving time, money, and you're having better precision. But right now I'm hearing that it's very expensive and it can be time consuming 'cause you have to refill them all the time. Whereas you just get one big tank and there you go. So that's something I'm thinking about. You know, we do invest in a lot of research and technology as an industry, but a lot of it goes towards our vine, like science, the science of cranberries. So I always say that the more we can put into the production and protection of, of any farming is really, really good. And then food science, um, I mentioned that earlier, like how do we get our food eaten more often by more people? Around the world. I mean, that's the magic wand. And so if you ask me what my magic wand would be for cranberry, I would love to see it in a dried format where it would have shelf life, not impacted by heat or cold. And then it would have, the powder form would have all the nutrients you would need, that you would get out of a glass of juice. Because I know that cranberries are healthy for you, they're good for your teeth, they're good for your heart, they're good for your mind, they're good for your gut. Like, wouldn't that be so great if we could somehow figure out such a high nutrient food in a tiny little form? That's my wish for technology. I think we're getting there. I know we're getting there. I know we're getting there. I love that. We do o we as an ocean spray we do have a global presence. We, we are in Europe, um, we are in India, we are in China, we are in New Zealand, Australia, Caribbean. But we've gotta be able to figure out how do we break it down so that's not just accessible, but then people need to know how and why to eat it. So that's kind of something that I've been thinking about. I started this nonprofit called Cranberry Learning Inc. And we mm-hmm. Are focusing on, you know, two pillars, just teaching generally about cranberry learning. It has to start somewhere, but while you're learning about cranberries, maybe that would invoke more thoughts about your workforce plans and, or it might prompt you to think about how you. The relationship that you have with Cranberry and how you eat it. So I'm really hopeful that between, you know, making these connections that, oh yeah, let me think about this, or let me be more creative. But I think generally speaking, it's really hard to get consumers to, well, myself included, if we always, we naturally wanna do what you've always done. But if you do that, then you're always gonna get the same results. So then how do you, um, that's the tricky part is how do you. How do you step out of your comfort zone to try something different? So if farming's the same way, eating's the same way, um, we wanna do better. Like none of us wanna spend more money than what we have to, uh, we all want what's best for our farms. But then it becomes relative, we all, what's best for our bodies, but then it becomes relative. So that's where I've, I'm beginning to like, have some fun in that play space that you define what, what food is to you. You know, you, you as the consumer, you as the listener. It's your right. It's your choice to customize your life. How you want it. And I already know from an agriculture point of view, especially using cranberries, I have limitations, right? Like, we can't just change the product profile consistently to the consumer. I mean, our vines are in the ground for 50 plus years, so we can't, you know, like that they're not designed to be modified on every turn of a trend. I think in our role of agriculture, we just hope that, uh, we can fill that space for you and that you as a consumer get to decide what works for you. So I, I really hope and pray that the young generation that's in school right now. Who's trying to determine, I wanna you make an impact on this world. How am I gonna make an impact? I'd say food science or distribute like something in the agriculture sector, because you are, you do have a chance in the ability to make an impact in someone's life by bringing the product to the store or, from the farm to a new region or yeah, be the next person that's inventing the next, I mean, can you imagine a world before resins? I can't, no. I, I think you're so right, especially with so many farmers aging out, the statistics always changing, but like, you know, that almost all farmers are over the age of 50. It's like mm-hmm. There's definitely a need for young people. I'm passionate about sharing that. I think that something that comes up for me is when I talk to more natural minded consumers, a lot of times they think that, oh, well, you know. So many older farmers, they just, they just are so stuck in their ways and they wanna keep doing it the way they've always done it. I think it's really important that you did say farmers are going to do what's best for their farm, and they're not trying to spend like all this extra money. Nobody's trying to just waste resources, waste inputs at all. Like, and I mean, maybe one, one out of like 2000, 3000 farmers maybe. Mm-hmm. But I think that's a huge misconception farmers are genuinely, really eager to implement any changes that'll come their way. Like if they're accessible and maybe not like drones, that they may not be affordable yet, but people are really excited for these innovations. They just need a lot of times, need young people like to take, take the lead and make it happen. There's a cranberry grower that's our neighbor, and he went to school for, uh, coding in software engineering. And he worked in corporate business, I'll just say 10 years, give or take. And then he took his knowledge and his passion for his family farm, and now he's a full-time c creamery grower. And in the um. 15 years he's been home, he has started two businesses that are now supporting the industry, um, with his software designs because he saw a need, he saw value and, um, well, data collection and analytics, and then being able to work with our systems so that we're all integrated. I mean, it was, he's just brilliant. Um, I'm really proud of him. He now serves on our board of directors. So I think it's great for Ocean Spray. Um, and when you, when you think about that, like we, we want, we want leaders to say, I have, I have a place at the table and, and I know that my ideas can make a difference and, and making room for those ideas. I just think it's really important that we support, um, all of us who, who want to be a part of this conversation and. Frankly, you don't need to be born into agriculture or farming to be a part of it. You don't need to live near it to be a part of it. You can identify and being a part of this wonderful world of agriculture if your heart calls you to it. Yeah. And there's a place for you. Um, and you just might, like I said, you might be just the next inventor or you may be the next dietician that says, Hey, I really wanna, you know, help you work through these dietary things. And, I know some great. Tools. Yeah. Right. So it's, when I think of agriculture, we are connected in community and I'd like to emphasize that, that in our cranberry world, it, we can't be cranberry centric. Yeah. We have our cranberry goggles on at times because we don't farm like row crops, you know? Yeah. I'm from central Wisconsin and I've been told that I live in the salad bowl of Wisconsin because of what we grow here. All kinds of, you know, carrots, beets, onions, garlic, sweet peas, cucumbers, potatoes, in addition to all of our livestock, dairy, and cranberry. Right? So what I name all of those. Just off the cuff for what Wisconsin's known for. We do not farm like anybody else in, in theory. But the more I've spoken with farmers and gotten understand our commonalities, we are so much the same. Mm-hmm. You do care about the land. We have no one's working in agriculture if they do not care for wildlife in the soil. You live in it, you breathe on it, you walk on it, you are fully integrated into it 'cause you want to be there. And not only that, we are woven into our communities. It's, it's that economic point that we're not just, it's not just from the farm to the table, but it's everywhere in between. It's the insurance that I'm providing to our employees. It's the payroll that I'm providing to them as well. Now they're able to go and live the life that they have for their families and then they're producing. Wonderful citizens through what they're doing and what their wives are doing. And I, I know, I just feel like that's something that we have something really special to celebrate in agriculture and here in central Wisconsin is that there's so much agriculture that touches the lives. Even if you aren't a farmer, you've been touched by it. Yeah. I, when I visited you, I don't know if you remember, but we went to like a little diner down the road and had cranberry pie. Yeah. I thought that was awesome because, well, first of all that there are just so many cranberry growers in the same general area, but also just, I don't know, it's similar with some kind of crops in the south for sure. But it's just something about like the community loves it and cares about it I just thought that was super special. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, it doesn't, um, hurt or help that, you know, some of us are related 'cause it's genera, it's generational. Mm-hmm. But I don't think we realize how cranberry centric we are until we step out of our community and then we realize, it's different everywhere else. You don't realize how good we have it. Like the familiarity of knowing your neighbors and we're all watching out for each other. And especially where I live, it's one farm after another. I mean, I live in the town of Cranmore. Um, there used to be one railroad stop, but there's not even that anymore. I mean, there's, there's no post office, there's, there's nothing. It's just a region. Um, but we, if one person does something detrimental, it could be detrimental to all of us. So the unity that we have. It is profound because we can't afford to, to be polarized, I guess, against each other. And some of those meanings can get contentious. Um, like what is the right mindset for the greater good of our area? But whether it's our cranmore area or whether it's the Wisconsin industry, we have an innate knowledge knowing that we cannot afford to be separated from one another. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And really no one really knows cran. I mean, you, you, you've kind of hinted at it, when people think of cranberries, they think of one brand. Mm-hmm. It's only half of what's out there, which means there's a whole other world of cranberries. So I feel like Ocean Spray does a really great job representing the world of, of cranberries. I think I'm very proud to be an ocean spray grower and, but, um. But there's a whole other world out there outside of Ocean Spray. So it's a slippery slope and we gotta be careful it doesn't turn into a mudslide. So I think that makes it challenging though. 'cause we wanna advocate with other farmers, but then we have different, things that we're protecting and that makes it really challenging in the world of agriculture because we wanna support, you would think that, oh, you, if you're an egg, you just, you just support egg. We have to battle. Have you still have your business? Yeah, yeah. No, I totally, we def definitely, I think listeners will understand that for sure. I just thinking about like driving around your town, you took me to kind of like, I don't know, is it the distribution center where you guys all drop off your cranberries and receiving state? Um, maybe just share about that and then we haven't talked about harvest. Maybe just finish up by talking about harvest. Yeah. Okay. So, um. We, we were talking about the science of cranberries in August, in September, where my sister and I, um, have been taking tissue samples and soil samples and things like that, send them to the lab. So when we're done doing that's her cue to say, okay, I think these cranberries are ready to be harvested, but I need science to tell me that they're ripe and ready to go. So she'll take samples to the receiving station that has a scientific lab where they will measure, and again, I'm not scientific, so I'm not gonna get lost in detail, but they will measure the ripeness of the cranberry. So the bricks is one of the things that they're measuring. And so they will then give Jenna the report card and say, okay, these vine varietals are ready and you're delivering the fruit at the color we are looking for. So ocean spray or any other handler, if it's too white, they don't want it. Basically they wanna make sure that you're delivering red cranberries. So then once we get the green light that our fruit is ready to harvest, then we will get a strategic map and we will look at our entire farm. And every farm will do this because you only have so much water. So you have to be able to manage your time and your water so that you aren't flooding things out, you aren't freezing things out, you aren't taking things and leaving them unprotected and so on. So you're managing your harvest so that you're delivering what you say you're gonna deliver each day. And then that's for like 30 to 45 days. So it's a lot of management. Yeah. That's wild. So, um, Jenna has a calendar and she maps, she kind of overlays the calendar of time with the calendar of the map, and then each farm will figure out what the delivery capacity is. So, you know how big. Um, your equipment is, so we use dump trucks. Other people use semis. You have dump trucks or semis, one or two reasons. Um, how big are your wide, are your roads? So can a semi make a turn? If a semi cannot make a turn, you're not bringing semis out or you will have dumped cranberries everywhere and damage to the truck. So depending on how wide your beds are, it also is determined by how much can you afford and do you have storage? So can you afford six dump trucks and do you have warehouses for them when you're not harvesting them? So once you've figured out who's gonna be delivering and who's what truck, what equipment you have, so you've got that all sorted out. So now you've got your time, your equipment, and now you're watching the weather. And now it is time to run the water. So now your marsh manager will, um, open up the floodgates and move the water using flood ditches. So each cranberry mart in Wisconsin, they're made up of these football fields, soccer fields of beds, but they are planted in, um, a matrix, like a checkerboard of sections. Now, there's no rhyme or reason, um, to what section is what, except for what the farmers determined. And the farmer's gonna determine what they're gonna plant or what vines are gonna go where, depending on the blossom and the harvest. So you're not gonna put one bed. In theory that blossoms first, next to a bed that blossoms last because now you gotta figure out this water. You really wanna be the most efficient as possible and go bed by bed or section by section. So once we've determined what suction we're gonna start with, we'll start flooding those areas using flood ditches that are not areas where you grow cranberries. They're just ditches next to the beds that hold the water. So then we're very high tech here and all over Wisconsin, and we use wooden boards. So they're handmade, handcrafted from locally harvest wood cut into boards that fit just perfectly inside the culvert. So think of a culvert as a round circle, and you cut it in half. So now you have a half moon. So now you cut those boards to fit the half moon and they stack one on the other. And to get them out, it's super high tech. You get a, an iron hook and then you hook the boards and you pull them out. So it is very hands-on. That's funny. Um, it is, is definitely, cowboy country out here, if you will. It's cold and, you know, things can happen and things like that. You don't wanna slip and fall. Remember, if you're on a culvert, you're surrounded by water on most sides of you, except for the dike that's holding the culvert. So you don't wanna fall. So once the water's moved, now we're flooding the beds. So now we're getting ready to actually pick the berries. So now the first part is we'll flood it up to your ankle. And as the water's coming in and we're flooding up to the ankle, we will remove the irrigation pipe. So we will unhook it, or take the nozzles off and put it out to the side. And then the picker will come down and drop down into the bed. Sometimes they need a bridge, sometimes there's a ramp, but they're on a, usually like a track system, and they'll drop down into the bed. And this is where the concept of sleeping beauties comes back into play. So when the picker comes in, it has a comb on the front and the back of the picker, and it'll comb through the cranberry vines like it's combing their hair. So literally it'll like brush through the vines, and as it's combing the vines, the berries are lightly plucked off. And because there's four hollow pockets on the inside of a cranberry, just like our heart chamber, they float. So now you've got these floating berries kinda lingering in the water, if you will. So as we add more water, the berries are floating to the surface of the of the water. And, but now they're floating all over the place. Like we need some way to organize them. And we use mother nature. We say, okay, mother nature, what way are you blowing the wind today? Right? So she's blowing it to the east side or the west side. Then we'll corral them to the side that she's blowing them in. So now they need to be elevated out. So there's one of two ways. Either you can pump them out or you can drop, um, like an escalator if you will, down into them and escalate them out. We prefer the berry pump. It's faster and more efficient, and does less damage, less bruising to the berries, and all the handlers will, um, give you a report card as well when you bring your berries in and they'll say, you had too many white, or you had all these red, which is great. Or We really like your size, or We didn't like your size. Yeah. Or you delivered too many leaves or whatever have you. Or they're bruised or whatever. So they've used these optical sorters at the receiving station to test the fruit to make sure that they're getting the fruit that they're asking for. So once the berries are pumped outta the bed. They essentially go into a cleaner. And then as they're being cleaned, they're being cleaned with water and then, elevated into a dump truck. So all of this is happening on our marsh right at the bed, or you may have to elevate them out of the bed and then take 'em to a cleaning station before they're delivered. But essentially, when you deliver your dump truck of cranberries, they have been washed so that, leaf debris is gone and the only thing you're delivering is just the cranberries. So then when you roll up to this receiving station that you mentioned at Ocean Spray, you have this dump truck or a semi, and now you have to back it in. So you have to be a really good driver. And this is one of the reasons why I may have asked my company to not put me in a dump truck. 'cause I do not like going in reverse. But you go in reverse on this ramp and then it has this hydraulic lift and it'll lift you up and then you open up the back gate and then the cranberries fall into this pool and then it kinda shakes a little bit and then, and then you're done. I really enjoyed going by there. I know it wasn't even harvest season, but it kind of gave me just a better idea of like, oh, this is what that process looks like. And people come from, how far around do people come from to all meet and drop all hours? Um, probably two hours. Uh, one I, 'cause there's only a couple receiving stations in the state. So if you're a northern grower, you may be having to drive an hour or two to get to that. Okay. Wow, I didn't realize that. You just happen to be right down the road. That's nice. Yeah. Yeah, we're really lucky. That's awesome. Very cool. I'm sure there's endless things that people don't know, but do you think there's anything else that we haven't really covered that listeners would like to hear? I, I, I always think, um, it's a good idea for us to address that cranberries are universal and can be eaten throughout the year. It's just we forget to stock our freezers, at the harvest time. I'm getting to understand too that it's really hard to find fresh cranberries, but if and when you can. Always put them in your freezer. And don't be afraid to use cranberry sauce, to get cranberries into your cuisine. So, uh, I really like hot foods. So when you mix cranberry sauce with like a Chipotle sauce or something like that, it's a nice way to add, the fruit to your cuisine, but then you're still keeping the integrity of the heat. I've just been playing around with things like that to just even for myself say, how can I eat cranberries? That's normal on an everyday basis, right? Yeah. It's so much more than the Thanksgiving meal that people probably think of. Mm-hmm. What is your number one favorite way to consume cranberries? Oh. Oh, that's such a good, oh, I mean, here I'm drinking cranberry juice, but, um, that's probably for me the easiest. 'cause I always have it in their fridge, but, that's really not fair. So if I, if it wasn't juice, um, okay, so I'm eating trail mix. That's probably my second easiest way. Um, I think it's the salsa. I think anything where I can mix cranberries into like a mole, like an adobe sauce or something like that, it's just, that's an easy way for me to do it. I get, a little overwhelming in the kitchen with all the chopping and cooking. Thank God for my husband these days. Mm-hmm. Um, but time is of essence for me, so I don't like things that are overly complicated. I life is pretty complicated enough, so if I can crack open. A couple of things, like a jar this, a jar of that, mix it together. I don't get lost in detail too much, so I just like get quick and easy, but healthy. Last question, and I meant to ask you this before, but do you have any kind of arrangement as an ocean spray grower? Like, do you guys get ocean spray products? How does that work? We do get a discount at the receiving station. Okay. If we, call ahead and say, Hey, I wanna restock my refrigerator. Um, with some juice, we do get a discount. But if anything we just have so much pride and I think there's a passion. I think if anything there's, there's no extra, extra we get out of it other than it's a good story to tell on an airplane. No, that's beautiful. I definitely understand that. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story and giving us some insight into the cranberry world. I feel very honored I know this is your everyday life, but for me, I feel like you are just a cranberry genius, so I really appreciate it. Oh, well thank you and thank you for giving me this opportunity and I really appreciate being able to share my story a little bit. I enjoy just talking about the people side and the farming side. It's hard for me to memory recall the stats. It's probably like good to have it all, but I'm not a MythBuster and stuff like that. There's just so much positive, I guess, part of the farming that I really like that I just, that's what I wanna focus on. And so thanks for giving me this opportunity to like, find my words it's good to see you again and you're always welcome. Please come back. Bring a little man. Thank you. Oh my gosh, that would be awesome.

1:16:22

Before you close your podcast listening device, your Spotify, your Apple, whatever you're listening on, if you enjoyed this episode, I would love it if you would, first of all, let me know, maybe leave a review or send me a text message. Preferably leave a review. That'd be cool. I always forget to ask for those, But Heidi and I chatted after recording just about really the fact that there is a big chunk of this story that is pretty much missing when it comes to the indigenous tribal nations that played a very big role in, first of all, introducing cranberries to the white man so that we. You know, are now where we are today. And I'm excited to know that she is kind of doing some in-depth research and trying to partner with the natives in her area to kind of fill in the gaps in this story. And so if this is something that you are fascinated in the cranberry story and you would like kind of some of those holes filled in, that would be something that I think she would love to know. I think she would probably love some encouragement in that area. Personally, this is not Heidi speaking. This is me speaking Hannah, Hannah at the Gardens personally myself. When I am interacting with people who are from native communities, a lot of times as you have actually heard, probably on previous episodes, particularly the Wild Rice episode, maybe it was spoken on the record, that. A lot of times people will manipulate or kind of abuse the stories that indigenous communities share or exploit them. Like they'll even sometimes say a certain version of the story and it will be twisted, or their words will be left out, and so a lot of times. Groups and communities really aren't super thrilled to share their stories. And I think that is a shame and it's definitely, it leaves for some gaps, like I said. But I think that, we're also kind of at a point in our world, in our culture where we really just wanna hear the story, like the full story. This is just my thought, but I don't really want to hear the BS story. Where there's a huge gap missing that everyone knows is missing yet we just don't wanna talk about it. And so I'm interested in really hearing that full historical, in depth. Thing, uh, whatever that would look like. And I think Heidi's kind of interested in, you know, revealing some of that too, and supporting the people who she works with, the people who are living in her community, who are all still largely intertwined in the cranberry world, all that word vomit to say, if that's something that you would find cool, let us know. After this week we're gonna start kind of heading over to England and talk about farming in the UK for a few weeks, if that's cool with you. Like always, if you're willing to please leave a review. Uh, but honestly, most importantly, if you have a podcast guest recommendation, send them my way. Thank you. Have a fantastic week.