This fall I was driving along Rte.202 in Western Massachusetts. It was after the leaves had left the trees and the landscape struck me as quite gray and barren, not surprising I suppose for November. Back in Rochester it didn’t seem so dreary. I decided as I drove down Mary’s Pond Rd. that the green pines and crimson bogs helped alleviate a lot of November’s gloom.
As fall has moved into winter, the many large trucks that rumble down our roads during cranberry season have diminished. They take our local berries to various locations for processing. Some go to the Decas facility in Carver while others go to Ocean Spray in Middleboro. Wet picked cranberries are processed into juice and canned sauce. Dry picked berries are bagged and show up in the grocery store. Here in Rochester, we’re lucky to get fresh picked cranberries straight from the Hartley- Rhodes bog (of TV fame) to Friends Market at Plumb Corner.
One of the most successful innovations in cranberry marketing has been dried sweetened cranberries. First introduced by Ocean Spray as “Craisins”, today there are several brands available. The current “Decas Farms” brand relies on 85+ years of cranberry growing to perfect the berries that they dry and sweeten. They even grow a lower sugar berry for their “Lean Crans.”
Back to those big cranberry trucks, Duffy Clapp was telling me that when he drove for Hiller’s (Hiller’s bogs are now owned by the Beaton family), one of his routes was to Maine where he delivered cranberries to be split and frozen to be put into ice cream. Cranberries have certainly come a long way from being seen mostly on the Thanksgiving table.
Fall and cranberry season are now long past, and many bogs are ice covered. If our cold weather continues soon, they’ll be enlivened by hockey players and ice skaters.
By Connie Eshbach
