00:00 hello welcome to Kate's Ag today i am
00:02 in Ontario Canada i'm here at Muskoka
00:05 lakes farm and winery home of Johnston
00:07 cranberries so I'm going to be showing
00:09 you a cranberry operation
00:13 [Music]
00:27 uh
00:33 stop is Toronto airport so
00:36 if you haven't been down the 400 in a
00:38 tractor you haven't lived
00:40 lots of picture ups
00:42 anyways good to have you here my name is
00:44 bob and i'll be talking about
00:45 cranberries and how they grow here we
00:48 have my father rob driving today
00:51 so i just got him out of the nursing
00:52 home got to get him back in time for
00:54 medication so we can't be too long i do
00:58 apologize for the weather we were hoping
01:00 to have rain and cold and sleet what are
01:03 we gonna do
01:05 so anyway folks it's nice to have you
01:07 here we have a lady here from Montana
01:10 who works for CNN and uh
01:13 taking pictures of us
01:15 anyway Johnston's been growing
01:16 cranberries here for the past 60-plus
01:19 years so do all the cranberries kind of
01:21 float to the top or how are they
01:22 harvested they look right here they're
01:24 still
01:25 they're still attached to the vines yeah
01:27 but by flooding them instead of sort of
01:29 almost laying on the bog surface they
01:32 float up and they're because the vines
01:34 are you know about six inches tall so it
01:36 makes
01:37 the berries float up which makes it
01:38 easier for the machine to get underneath
01:40 them and pick them up if you dry harvest
01:42 you miss about five to ten percent that
01:44 just fall you can't get underneath them
01:46 enough but when you wet harvest like
01:48 this you can
01:49 the berries are sitting up higher and
01:51 it's easier to pick them up do lose a
01:53 few that you'll see floating and we
01:54 collect them at the end call them
01:56 floaters this machine doesn't pick them
01:58 up but we will boom them collect them
01:59 and they're less than five percent it's
02:01 only about two three percent that we
02:02 lose oh wow okay yeah and then we take
02:05 those and use them for juice but these
02:06 can be used for fresh foods oh that's
02:08 awesome
02:09 why do you choose to dry pick some of
02:11 the fields rather than wet harvest them
02:13 all for us we're a small market so the
02:16 dry picking allows us to go in early and
02:19 pick a small amount of fruit for our
02:22 store and for our local markets without
02:24 having to commit a large acreage for
02:26 flooding because once you flood you want
02:28 to pick a couple days yes
02:31 because
02:32 we got three acres we just flooded so i
02:33 want to have this done in a couple days
02:35 and that's a lot more fruit than we'll
02:36 sell
02:37 but these will be sent off for
02:38 processing that's really interesting
02:41 thank you you're welcome so cranberries
02:43 only go on a very unique environment
02:46 they need to have a high acidic peat
02:48 soil here and that's what we have we are
02:51 now one of maybe two farms in Ontario
02:54 that farm cranberries the cranberry
02:56 market has not been great we probably
02:58 wouldn't survive if it wasn't for our
03:00 winery and nice folks like you coming to
03:03 visit us most people think that
03:05 cranberries grow in water but they don't
03:07 they grow on dry ground if you open up a
03:10 cranberry you'll find four little air
03:12 chambers in them we use those air
03:14 chambers at harvest time to float the
03:16 berries so we're just starting to
03:19 harvest now essentially the month of
03:21 October is our harvest time the
03:23 cranberry festival which is kind of
03:26 world famous anyway is the week after
03:28 thanksgiving so just like a week and a
03:31 half away here is the dry cranberry bog
03:33 before they flood it as you can see this
03:36 is what the cranberry vines look like
03:38 and then this is the bog that they
03:40 flooded
03:41 the bog that we're going by here and the
03:43 right here we've already harvested so
03:46 this is what the cranberry box looked
03:48 like most of the year okay very little
03:51 evidence of berries in there
03:53 and we just picked in here uh those
03:56 products went to the store because we
03:58 need a product of our cranberries so
04:01 that's the way the farm looks like most
04:03 of the year coming up on our right you
04:05 people from Toronto you may see the
04:08 Bala Bog monster right up here in the end
04:10 he was down in the distillery district
04:13 that got tired of the high price of
04:15 housing in the GTA so he moved up here
04:18 that's what you look like if you don't
04:20 eat cranberries so just a warning to you
04:23 is that an irrigation hose
04:25 yeah
04:26 yeah so we have an irrigation system
04:29 on the whole place
04:43 yeah i know we uh
04:45 yeah we have a full irrigation system on
04:47 the bogs
04:48 because cranberries grow in a low-lying
04:50 area there's frequent frost and then
04:53 so the cold air will settle on a calm
04:56 clear night the cold air will settle in
04:58 the bog and it may be 10 degrees celsius
05:00 up up
05:02 up land
05:03 but it'll be zero on the on the bog so
05:05 we have to run the sprinkler so in the
05:06 spring we protect the new buds that are
05:08 growing with the sprinkler system and
05:11 then in the fall we protect the berries
05:13 because they'll freeze as well
05:15 until we harvest them oh wow so the
05:17 sprinkler system is put in
05:19 installed in the spring we use it
05:21 through the summer we also supplement
05:23 our irrigation this summer but it's
05:24 primarily there for frost production
05:26 that's really interesting yeah so it's
05:27 about six weeks in the spring and six
05:29 weeks in the fall that
05:31 you know come in the middle of the night
05:33 fire up the sprinklers and
05:35 yeah so it's called frost run that's a
05:38 pretty big part of cranberry growing so
05:40 wow that's awesome i didn't know that
05:43 yeah
05:44 other uh farms have different methods
05:46 but that's what we do so
05:48 it's been a common method since the 50
05:50 frame rates in the old days um cranberry
05:52 farms would uh would actually flood
05:54 frost protect particularly in the fall
05:57 and i think that's what kind of left to
05:58 lead to the wet harvest but uh because
06:00 when you flood but it takes you know a
06:01 couple days but
06:03 you'd have to flood and you can't and
06:04 then you drain the water off and you
06:06 lose it uses a ton of water where the
06:08 sprinklers are much more efficient
06:09 environmentally friendly that's great in
06:11 the spring when the cranberry is
06:13 blooming it has a little pretty pink
06:16 flower on it with the indigenous people
06:18 it looked like the head of the crane
06:21 and so they called the crane berry then
06:23 when they were texting to the early
06:24 settlers they didn't touch them but
06:27 anyway the original name was cranberry
06:29 and now we know it is cranberry in the
06:31 spring because we don't have a lot of
06:33 native bees here we've had to bring in
06:35 bee hives so first year we brought the
06:37 beehives in left them around the block
06:40 come into work in the morning and find
06:42 all the beehives have been broken into
06:44 guess what bears found them bears like
06:46 honey so then we get smart and we put
06:48 the beehives in behind that electric
06:50 fence there and they were good there
06:52 until the bears learn how to disconnect
06:54 the batteries and then get into the
06:56 honey so now we put the batteries inside
06:59 we had a lady from toronto the other day
07:01 said bob when you put the bees in behind
07:03 the fence how do they get out
07:07 i didn't want to explain to her that
07:09 beans could fly but i figured her
07:10 friends would tell her all right do you
07:12 want a driver
07:13 you can actually see where you're going
07:15 now yeah but just give yourself a good
07:17 burp this isn't possibly slopes off like
07:20 this and it's a freaking pitch
07:24 you can see the distance i've given it
07:26 there yeah
07:27 so what i'll do
07:28 is there's five things you gotta do
07:31 all right
07:34 you gotta worry about um
07:36 steering and you know your line and the
07:38 picking plane so that's
07:40 you know
07:40 that's a big part of it you to uh
07:44 worry about the height of the teeth and
07:46 how many vines are coming up and how you
07:48 make sure you're getting all the pick
07:49 all the berries so that's number two
07:52 uh number three three you're kind of
07:54 worried about wheel slippage sometimes
07:56 um if you get into some heavy binds or
07:58 you're pulling a lot of boats you see
07:59 the wheels start to spin like damage
08:01 and then number four
08:03 you're dealing with the boat filling the
08:05 boat in the winch so you're always
08:07 playing with that and in deep water it's
08:09 different than it is in shallow water
08:10 shallow water is a lot easier because it
08:12 vines and once the boats are heavy
08:16 the
08:17 the vines will sort of keep the boat in
08:18 place but when you get into this stuff
08:20 on it so you're always trying to get
08:21 your foot out there and
08:23 trying to worry about the winch and and
08:25 so normally i fill the boat at the front
08:27 and then
08:28 keep and just keep
08:29 winching the boat up
08:31 and then once it's just before you stop
08:33 if you let the winch out makes it easier
08:35 to change
08:36 and uh you know try and fill them like
08:38 that and uh
08:41 yeah that's the that's the main
08:43 part of it so what i'll do is i'll get
08:44 you driving and worrying about the uh
08:47 teeth
08:48 and that kind of stuff for now all right
08:51 well i'll
08:58 on this bog on your left you can see the
09:00 cranberries in there uh they're not very
09:02 visible they kind of hide underneath the
09:05 leaves but we'll be in harvesting here
09:07 probably in a couple weeks we're just
09:09 starting to flood on this slide so when
09:12 the bees are right then we flood the bog
09:14 we bring water from lake orville up here
09:17 in a minute you'll see the waterfall
09:18 when you go by it the water comes down
09:20 from the lake and floods the bog the
09:23 reason we flood it because remember
09:25 those air chambers in the berries it
09:27 floats the berries so when we're ready
09:29 to flood or harvest we flood the bog the
09:32 berries float on the top and we pick
09:35 them off the first way of harvesting is
09:37 with a machine called the get singer
09:39 retracto toothpicker okay it goes in and
09:42 gently rakes the berries off those
09:45 berries are good for fresh fruit we're
09:47 only about five percent of the cranberry
09:49 farms that harvest that way once we got
09:52 all the berries off that way then we go
09:54 through the equipment that is called the
09:55 beater and that's the most often used
09:58 harvesting tool and that's good for
10:00 juice and jams and those kinds but not
10:03 good for fresh fruit so the cranberry
10:05 grows in there in a vine it's about six
10:07 feet long and only about six inches high
10:10 so we train them to go the length of the
10:12 bog so when we go into harvest we always
10:15 harvest in the same direction so we're
10:18 not ripping the plants out the
10:19 irrigation pipes going down the middle
10:21 of the bog
10:22 the only time we irrigate like this
10:24 summer was hot and dry
10:26 so we irrigated then and then this time
10:29 of the year normally we're irrigating
10:30 because we have frost but it's been so
10:33 warm we haven't needed to do that so
10:35 we're just coming up to the little
10:37 waterfalls up here where the water's
10:39 coming down uh to flood the bog and
10:42 you'll see that just in a minute here
10:44 it's quite pretty if you're going into
10:46 politics this would be a good place for
10:48 a photo op so you might want to stand up
10:50 there
10:51 so that's coming out of lake Orville and
10:53 the water comes down and floods the bar
10:56 so folks just let me recap when we're
10:58 ready to harvest we flood the bog we get
11:01 all the fruit off because we don't use a
11:04 lot of pesticides and chemicals we're
11:06 not damaging the water so we can return
11:08 the water to the system the water goes
11:11 by gravity from one bog to the next when
11:13 we're finished with that water we bottle
11:15 it we send it to Toronto for the
11:17 drinking water
11:19 little did you know right guys so anyway
11:22 then we get into winter time okay once
11:24 we've drained all the water like say
11:27 mid-November to mid-December the farm
11:30 looks pretty much like it does now very
11:32 little evidence of water it stays like
11:34 that until winter time when winter comes
11:37 then we flood the whole farm again the
11:39 reason for that is is we want ice to
11:42 form on top of the plant so when ice
11:44 forms then the frost goes down into the
11:46 roots and puts the plants in the
11:48 dormancy for the winter when snow comes
11:51 and we get a fair amount of snow here we
11:53 have to plow the snow off because snow's
11:56 an insulator and we want the frost to
11:59 stay deep into the roots so again the
12:01 month of October essentially is our
12:04 harvest time so we'll be in harvesting
12:06 on this side uh this next bar we've just
12:08 flooded it so it will be ready uh to
12:12 harvest probably sometime tomorrow these
12:15 geese are all battery operated
12:19 so before i go home at night i have to
12:21 collect them and get them all charged up
12:23 for the next day actually we're on the
12:25 migration path so they're just here uh
12:28 getting refreshed we also have oh we got
12:30 one right on the road down there the
12:32 heron
12:33 see him there
12:34 there's a family of them here and that's
12:36 one of the babies i think so
12:38 he'll take off and they got great big
12:41 wingspan and they're quite fun to look
12:44 at
12:46 so this will be in harvesting probably
12:48 tomorrow so you can see the berry
12:50 starting
12:58 [Music]
13:05 no i haven't
13:07 can you try them
13:09 i like them the freshly picked ones are
13:10 the best
13:13 thank you
13:17 wow i've never had a cranberry before
13:21 well a fresh cranberry
13:23 they're pretty tart
13:24 yeah they are but they're not bad
13:27 they're good
13:34 oh yes please thank you
13:41 thank you
13:46 all right like the ditch is way out
13:48 there right it's interesting what the
13:50 cranberries look like on the inside as
13:52 well that's what makes them float is
13:53 there there's arrow pockets inside and
13:55 there's about 20 seeds oh wow so
13:59 yes
14:00 yeah so that's why we ran we have
14:02 honeybees that come in to help pollinate
14:04 we have a lot of native pollinators
14:06 um because we love a lot forest in the
14:08 area and we protect those as best we can
14:10 yes their populations will change with
14:12 the sea with in some years they're
14:14 strong some years a week depending on
14:15 the
14:16 natural environment
14:18 so we bring honeybees in kind of his
14:20 insurance policy that
14:22 on a challenging year where it's a short
14:25 rainy you know july when we're in bloom
14:28 the honeybees will come in and help we
14:31 also take the honey and sell it in our
14:32 store as well so the beekeeper takes it
14:35 off when he leaves here each seed is one
14:38 grain of pollen
14:40 and the researchers found that
14:42 the more pollen the more seeds and
14:44 there's a direct relationship between
14:46 the more seeds the bigger the berry
14:48 wow so to get big berries you need good
14:50 pollination that is amazing
14:53 gosh there's so much to it that i just i
14:56 had no idea yeah the cranberry
14:59 so people want to know what do we do
15:01 with cranberries okay cranberries is a
15:03 very healthy product it only has about
15:06 three four percent sugar in it whereas a
15:08 grape has maybe 15 16 18 sugar so i got
15:12 a call from Oprah Winfrey the other day
15:14 and she said bobby you're doing the
15:16 tours like oh yes Oprah i wouldn't
15:18 message you well i'm so glad
15:20 tell everybody that i recommend
15:22 cranberry juice actually i read that in
15:24 the supermarket okay
15:26 she recommends cranberry juice when you
15:28 go to the store though to buy cranberry
15:30 juice make sure you read the label it
15:32 may say cranberry may have apple or pear
15:35 it's not bad for you but try to get pure
15:38 cranberry juice we sell it here in the
15:41 store and in specialty stores but we
15:44 found something else about cranberry
15:46 juice that we didn't know before i drink
15:48 a fair amount of it i mix it one to five
15:50 with water put little sweetener in it
15:53 and find it quite an enjoyable drink the
15:55 other thing i found out it has
15:57 anti-aging qualities to it i'm actually
16:00 168 years old and i only look in my
16:03 mid-90s now some of you are behind help
16:05 i understand that but if you drink
16:07 cranberry juice all year and come back
16:09 looking younger i'll get you a free
16:11 bottle of juice so there you go the
16:13 other thing we do and where working
16:15 farms are open every day of the year
16:17 except christmas and boxing day and in
16:19 the spring last year we tapped over 400
16:22 maple trees so you can come experience
16:24 the maple harvest and that's always fun
16:27 to do over top of where the cars are
16:29 we're starting to farm blueberries
16:32 so that's blueberry hill
16:34 so we're just in the experimental stage
16:36 there but folks we've had to diversify
16:40 and do all these things these touristy
16:42 things because we wouldn't survive if we
16:44 just relied on cranberry the market's
16:47 been so low so that's one of the things
16:49 that we've done and then having nice
16:51 folks like you come and visit us that
16:53 helps also uh wine tasting we started it
16:56 because years ago when we had so many
16:58 white cranberries they weren't
16:59 marketable so then we started making the
17:02 wine now i'm at the Muskoka lakes farm
17:04 and winery store and i'll show you some
17:06 of the products they make out of their
17:07 cranberries cranberry salsa
17:10 white chocolate cranberry
17:14 fresh cranberry bag
17:18 cranberries
17:20 cranberry blueberries
17:22 [Music]
17:25 we want people to come here and enjoy
17:28 the outdoors but also uh learn something
17:31 and and you know taste cranberries and
17:34 really embrace the whole experience yes
17:36 and how cranberries are grown which i
17:38 think a lot of people don't know so it's
17:40 incredible to be able to eat a cranberry
17:42 and see the process of growing them and
17:44 harvesting them yeah so
17:47 it's fun to share that with people yes
17:49 and of course by a wonderful family
17:52 operation yeah my uh which is the best
17:55 part my son North and my wife Wendy and
17:57 myself
17:59 run the farm now i have four boys it was
18:01 a pleasure touring your cranberry farm
18:03 that's great Kate nice to meet you thank
18:05 you so much for watching today's video
18:07 make sure to like and subscribe okay bye
18:11 [Music]
18:21 you