Harvesting Cranberries: The Life of a Cranberry From Harvesting to the Store

These red beauties grow on low, trailing vines. They are harvested from mid-September to the end of November. Sometimes a dry harvest method is used. Growers use a machine that looks like a lawnmower. It picks berries off the vines and puts them in storage bins. You get whole berries from the dry harvesting method.

A wet harvesting method produces cranberries for juice, relish, and sauce.

Fields are flooded with 18 inches of water when the fruit is ripe. Workers drive a large water reel (looks like an egg beater) through the field to disturb the fruit from the vines. It floats to the top of the water.

After these berries are collected, they go through a dryer. Ripe, undamaged ones bounce over wooden barriers and move on to packaging.

Bad berries don't make it over the barriers, so they are discarded.

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