LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Cranberries: Berries
built 654 days ago
Harvesting cranberries has evolved quite a bit over the years. The first cranberries were painstakingly picked by hand. Then growers got clever and started using wooden scoops that look like large combs to lift berries off their vines. Today most cranberries are "wet harvested." This is done by flooding the bog with water so the berries float to the surface. This is the image most people associate with cranberry bogs.
Source:
Cranberries have ... been called "bounceberries," because ripe ones bounce, and "craneberries," a poetic allusion to the fact that their pale pink blossoms look a bit like the heads of the cranes that frequent cranberry bogs. The variety cultivated commercially in the northern United States and southern Canada, the American cranberry, produces a larger berry than either the Southern cranberry, a wild species that is native to the mountains of the eastern United States, or the European variety.
Source:
Each fall, hundreds of acres of cranberries are harvested in Oregon. Many of the bogs are visible along Highway 101 and make for an interesting roadside stop. During the harvest season you may witness a farmer harvesting his berries with his "beater." The "beater" churns the water, which knocks the cranberries from the vines. Loosened cranberries float to the surface. Water harvest of this particular bog (just under 2 acres) takes about 4 1/2 hours.
Source:
Native to North America, cranberries grew wild in bogs from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, in New Jersey, Michigan, and on the west coasts of Washington and Oregon. Native Americans tended the bogs, hand weeding and harvesting the small red berries. Early settlers called them "crane-berries" because during one stage of growth the cranberry bud hooks downward resembling a crane's head. Later the name was shortened from "crane-berry" to cranberry.
Source:
The mills used to grade cranberries during harvest were designed almost 100 years ago. Barrels of cranberries used to be loaded onboard ships in the 1800's. Eating the fruit prevented scurvy. Folklore has it that one of these barrels was dropped while onboard. The cranberries spilled out and rolled down the ship's ladder. The good berries bounced down the stairs.
Source:
Most cranberries are harvested using the wet method. Growers flood their bogs with water then use harvesting machines that loosen the cranberries from the vine. With small air pockets in their center, the cranberries float to the water's surface. Growers corral the berries onto conveyers that lift them from the flooded bog onto trucks and into processing plants.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Berries