- Right now I'm in one
of Massachusetts' biggest cranberry bogs,
and they have just a couple hours
to harvest all of these cranberries.
Everybody knows the iconic image
of Ocean Spray cranberries sitting in the bog,
but not many people know the year-round work
that goes into getting them there,
and then getting them from the field
into bags of Craisins, jugs of juice,
and sauce cans all over the country.
Cranberries are one of the most challenging crops to grow
because they all have to be harvested and processed
within about a month's window leading up to Thanksgiving.
I feel like I'm pulling like 300 pounds in a sled.
The bigger challenge is developing the machinery
and systems required to harvest them fast enough
to turn a profit.
Today, I'm at Keith Mann's farm
in Southern New England to better understand the tricks
and gear behind the scenes of one
of the central figures of the American holidays.
This is the dry field. People don't see this.
This is cranberries before the water.
- A lot of people don't realize
cranberries don't grow in water.
We harvest them in water,
we protect them in wintertime underwater,
but year round they're dry.
And this is how they look just before harvest.
So the variety is Mullica Queen.
- [Dan] Yeah.
- [Keith] This little bit
of leaf produced all energy for these.
Each of these little hooks, we call them, was a blossom.
- [Dan] So it really is a full-time job.
Everything that goes into this crop sets you up
for the four weeks of harvesting.
- [Keith] Yeah, my crew's here year round.
- How often do you eat them?
- Anytime I'm thirsty.
- [Dan] They're very tart. They're delicious.
- Not everyone can eat them straight.
- [Dan] The team must spend months post-harvest using sand
to intentionally prevent the long,
woody strands from getting sun,
which will force new leaves to poke out.
Without doing this perfectly,
the following year's berries won't grow.
- [Keith] That's good for you. All those proanthocyanidins.
- What? The what?
- Proanthocyanidins.
I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly. (laughs)
All kinds of health benefits.
That's what blocks bacteria from attaching to the cell wall.
So that's why cranberries help
with urinary tract infections. - I can feel
my walls getting clean.
- Yeah, it's just cleaning you out.
- From here, it's finally time to flood the dry field.
This is done over a period of a few days.
And the water they use is actually passed
through from bog to bog through a system of dams.
All right, let's fill it up.
So what we're gonna do is remove some of the dam sort of-
- Yep, planks. - to shift all the water
from there over to here.
- Right.
To harvest, we don't want it too deep.
We'll look at a bog that's ready to harvest.
It's a shallow flow,
so you can see the fruit in the water
and see what you're doing when you're picking.
We need like a foot of water to harvest.
To load, we want the water maybe a foot above the vines.
You almost need like two feet of water
to load. - Okay, so you're filling
the water in stages.
- Yep.
- Do they wanna make berries that float more?
Would that be useful?
- They float fine.
- So I'm trying to fix the one problem you don't have.
(Keith laughs)
So we got the bog at a good water level.
What are we thinking? This is about a foot?
- [Keith] Yeah, it's a little deeper than a foot.
- It's time to use this
to beat those berries off the vines
and get them floating to the surface.
- Yep. This is called a water picker.
- [Dan] All right, so we can two-man this?
- Yeah.
- Oh, no joke.
- Yep.
- Look at the steering system.
You guys see the grill? It's really run on propane.
- [Keith] So we can see the berry lying right
in the right side of the reel.
And you can see the fruit floating up in the reel.
And this will pick 99.9%.
It doesn't leave much behind at all.
- Wow. How do you drive?
Is it like a tank?
- Exactly.
- Oh, I see the line.
- So be smooth.
I just push them all the way forward hard against there.
- Okay.
- I stop there. Stop, stop, stop.
'Cause that's a ditch there.
Now we gotta back up the line that's over here.
- Oh (beep).
(Keith laughs)
(Dan laughs)
- [Keith] Corner's a little bit tricky.
- We couldn't go the opposite way against here.
- No, it'd tear them all up.
And as we get in, we'll get to the center line,
and we go down one side of the flags
and right up the other side of the flags
and within inches of last year.
- [Dan] It's so amazing
to watch the fruit come out of the back.
That's the profit floating up,
right? - Yeah.
- [Dan] So how long will it take you
to pick this whole thing here?
- [Keith] I think I can do it in an hour.
- [Dan] Once the field has been fully picked,
it's time to get in the water
and try to get these berries onto a truck
as fast as possible.
This bog is growing Mullica Queen cranberries,
which are far more efficient
than the older varieties we saw in the previous bog.
Efficiency is calculated in barrels per acre.
These berries produce about 350 barrels per acre,
and the Early Blacks
in the previous bog produce just 150.
- So the feet move a little slower
in the water in waders,
and people tend to trip and fall.
Not that you will
- If these berries are more efficient,
why not just plant them everywhere?
- It takes five years to get bog back in production,
so you lose several years of production when you renovate.
It takes about 150 barrels per acre to cover your expenses.
Everything above 150 is profit.
So even if it's double the crop,
it's infinite more profit.
- We're gonna set up our truck sort of downwind.
Is that on purpose so you can help,
the wind will push everything towards you?
- Absolutely. We use the wind as much as possible.
- This is our pump that we're gonna use here.
- We call this a suction box.
- Okay. Right.
- All right, go ahead and lower it in.
- So the goal of this is
to get it just below the surface of the berries.
- Yep. If it's too deep, it draws too much water.
If it's too close to the surface,
it draws air and won't pump.
So that's about the right height.
So we gotta get the air out of the pipe.
- So once we turn this on,
this thing will start going (imitates machines rumbling).
- Yeah. So we're starting to suck water.
- [Dan] Oh, there it goes. Goodbye, cranberries.
- [Keith] Bon voyage.
- I can't quite explain it.
It's just like you got some air below you
so your feet wanna fire out.
Is it by now are you like sick of walking through this,
or you still love this feel?
- I love this.
People only see this, but we're working all year.
This is our reward right now.
- So like, if you've really done your job,
you can't even move, right?
(Keith laughs)
- We got fruit about that thick.
(Dan laughs)
- [Dan] It's just like gold. This is the red rush.
- Yeah, right. (laughs)
Crimson harvest.
- Wow.
You can really feel now the density of the crop.
Like, that's like almost, that's like half a foot,
right, at least. - Yeah.
All right, ready for some work?
You can see what he is doing.
It doesn't take a lot of work.
- Oh, you can feel the berries getting pulled
as he's tightening it here.
- Exactly. It's pressing against the back of your legs.
Your body's actually blocking the flow.
So what I do, I step outside or, yeah.
No, that's good. It's good.
- No, no, no. I'm hurting your yield right now, right?
(Keith laughs)
Wow, it is so cool to feel the like,
density difference from outside here to inside here.
- Exactly.
I mean, this is tons of fruit just inside this circle.
So if you hear air sucking, you're going too fast.
There you go. Give it a shot.
- All right.
- It's like one of the things that I'm doing right now
is helping the fruit.
It's all bunching up on the backside of this corral.
- So you're like a conductor.
- Yeah, I'm kinda regulating the shape of this corral.
So we can pull that off, but this is mostly catching.
He says you're going so fast.
See? They're piling up on top of the truck.
He's saying a little slower.
- So we're killing it.
- Yeah, you're killing it.
- So right now a setup
is you have one person out there pulling the band.
- A good crew is three people.
Four people is really nice.
One person pulling boom.
One person here sort of regulating the flow
and trying to help get the thick areas in here.
And one person managing the truck and trailer.
Today, we got five plus us, plus us.
- Plus us.
- [Keith] He is doing a great job.
- Well, you don't want to get overzealous, right?
But so much about this is like,
doing the exact right motion
so you're not over exerting yourself
so you can just keep going. - Yeah, do it all day long.
If I can show you-
- Yeah, please. - You can go a little,
you grab a big pile of fruit,
you pull it all the way to the box.
If you stop short of the box, it kind of piles up.
- The density in here is insane.
Dude, if I don't get out of here,
I'm gonna be cranberry sauce.
- Yeah, you might go in.
- It's crazy, I can really feel it.
They've got some oomph now.
They're really trying to get me in this pump.
- You're gonna get sucked right in.
No, it's going in pretty good.
- Get out? Ah! - Yeah.
- Sam says it's time to get out.
You're gonna get sucked in.
All right, we're gonna just reconnect this
and start all over again.
So that was our first loop.
- [Dan] Yep.
- [Keith] Look, we filled the truck.
- That whole truck was just from that one loop.
- It had one small pile in the front.
- Yeah, yeah. - That was one pull.
- Holy shoot.
- [Keith] He wants to pull.
- This is real CrossFit, CranFit. (laughs)
So we disconnected the boom,
and now we're setting a new.
What do we call?
- I call it grabbing another bite.
You're taking another bite. - We're grabbing another bite.
- You are pulling,
that was a truckload of fruit, 25 tons.
So you're pulling 25 tons of fruit.
- Yeah, you're welcome, America.
Look, they're laughing at me. (laughs)
It's okay. All right, connect me, Captain.
So now I just start, keep walking.
- What I do, I put it around my back,
and I just walk backwards.
Let the weight of your body fall into that thing
and just lean back.
And just keep your feet up to it.
So this is your body weight just pulling it along.
It's a good thigh workout.
- This is no joke.
- But you'll get to see
how much fruit you're moving right now
when you look up there.
It's amazing.
- Okay, so Keith's running to get the other truck
because they've filled up this one.
Obviously, they're wasting time if they don't have a truck.
So it's really important
that they get to keep continuing to pump all day.
I think he just left me here with this thing, though.
And none of the guys are coming to help me,
so I just feel like I'm gonna...
Ah, I'm good. Yeah.
I'll just keep walking this thing.
(upbeat music)
From here, everything from my pump is running up,
and then it's all moving with water again over to here.
And then this is like cleaning and sorting a little bit.
- [Keith] Yep.
- And then what is considered good goes
into the truck down there.
- Yeah, it's flowing right off the end of the grate.
The truck keeps advancing when it's full.
All the water and trash gets flushed down
to that pipe there and end up in the dump truck.
And a big screen around that catches the trash,
and the water obviously gets returned to the bog.
That's our endless trash can.
You can see from there everything that's returning
to the trash truck.
And in there, there's also filters
that's removing some of the water.
So not quite all the water goes into the truck.
Some water's going directly back to the bog.
- Trash is sticks. Trash is leaves.
- Anything you wouldn't want to eat.
- Once the team has loaded a truck with cranberries,
they'll send it to the Ocean Spray processing station
where it will join trucks from all over the region
in line to dump the haul.
So what's going on here?
- So as the truck comes up,
they get into the rack here,
and we just take a quick visual inspection
of it just to make sure the berries look good
and there's no problems with it.
Feeling through making sure everything looks good.
Visually inspect.
- [Dan] So what are you looking for in here?
- If there's a little bit of rot
or something to that effect.
- You're just making sure that the average
is pretty good, right? - Exactly. That's all it is.
- [Dan] So this is how much the farms are gonna be paid.
- [Joe] Absolutely.
- [Dan] So you're gonna weigh them on the way in here,
they're gonna dump,
and then you'll weigh them on the way out.
- [Joe] Exactly.
- [Dan] Gotcha.
So all these trucks are waiting to get dumped?
- [Joe] Yes.
(upbeat music)
- [Dan] How many cranberries are actually going
through here?
- [Joe] This year, we will probably push through
about 1.3 million barrels.
A barrel is 100 pounds of cranberries.
So up to 130 million pounds of cranberries will come
through here in the 60 days.
- [Dan] Nowhere in the world are there more cranberries
than right here right now, right?
- Wisconsin is the-
biggest grower, but- - All right, don't rank them.
(Joe laughs)
But in this way station right now-
- [Joe] Oh, yes.
- So Keith happened to have one of his trucks
at the front of the line here,
so we're gonna go for the ride
and see how the weighing system works.
- Once these lights light up, that's my turn to go.
- How many more weeks
of this this season? - I've got less
than two weeks to go.
So I'm in the final stretch.
- [Dan] Do you take a nap after? What do you do?
- I sail to Bermuda.
- [Dan] Really?
- [Keith] Yep.
- These are our berries
from this morning. - Yeah, you guys loaded those.
- Yeah, it was all me. It was all me.
You needed me.
- [Keith] (laughs) Couldn't have done it without you.
- This is independent.
- Yeah, it's just a larger group.
It's a bunch of family-owned businesses
that pooled together to create this.
It's grower-owned cooperative.
And the ramp we're picking up is about an inch wider
than this truck, three inches shorter.
- Really?
- [Keith] Really.
- So we're dangling off the edge?
- Lift number one. Let's go.
We're waiting all day for this.
- I can come?
- Come on, hop on in.
- All right, let's go boys.
(upbeat music)
- Look at the front wheel. The blue is where it goes up.
- That really pumps you up,
the front wheel, ey?
- [Keith] It does.
- [Dan] Nobody puts more cranberries
in one load than Keith, man.
- Go ahead, hold the button.
Until the truck's in the air, you have to hold it.
- [Dan] Oh my God, it's going.
How do you feel watching your truck just lifted
in the air, suspended like this?
- [Keith] It's wonderful.
- [Dan] It's wonderful.
- It's a load of cranberries.
(upbeat music)
- As the truck is getting ready to back up,
we'll lower this.
So this way the backrest will be right up
against the the side, obviously, right?
Then the grill will come in, give us our paperwork,
we'll note the bucket that we're putting the sample in,
and then we lift them up.
So as he is dumping, my guys will take scoops.
- [Dan] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [Keith] We take a true representative sample,
and then we send it down. - Before sending it in?
- [Keith] Absolutely.
- [Dan] There's no place in the world
where more cranberries get dumped faster.
- [Keith] That's right.
So we do the same thing 100, 110 times a day.
- [Dan] Come on, save the gold.
- [Keith] Yep.
- That's a red-looking product.
I like at the end when they start firing hard.
- [Keith] Yes, absolutely.
- [Dan] So what, so you just do that about 100 times a day?
- [Keith] Yep.
- [Dan] So how long are they held in those storage hoppers?
- So we will push all this through each day.
So as the fruit goes through, these are air blowers.
So they try to blow as many of the light leaves
and stuff off as possible.
The fruit goes forward,
and any of the leaves and stuff drop
into the hopper over there.
And then that just goes out to a compost dumpster.
- We honestly got lucky getting
to catch you come in and watch your own-
- That was lucky.
- watch your own cranberries come into the system.
From here, the cranberries will all be frozen.
Some of them will be dehydrated and sliced into Craisins.
Some will be juiced
to make Ocean Spray's iconic cranberry juice.
And the rest will be sent to the sauce plant
where they will be cooked, canned,
and sent to holiday tables across the country.
(upbeat music)