In case you’ve ever wondered what the berries in your Thanksgiving cranberry sauce looked like before they got sauced, here’s your answer.
At last month’s final regular-season New England Revolution soccer match, the folks from Ocean Spray set up an artificial cranberry bog outside the entrance to Gillette Stadium, where soccer fans could see what a New England cranberry harvest really looks like. Cranberry vines grow in marshy areas, and the fastest way to harvest cranberries is to flood the entire area, a process called wet harvesting. Once the vines are covered with water, machines called water reels rake the berries from the vines, and the cranberries–which contain pockets of air–float to the surface of the water, where they are gathered by growers.
The artificial bog outside Gillette Stadium had all the accoutrements of an actual cranberry bog: potted cranberry vines along the border of the bog, thousands of floating cranberries, a working water reel, and three men in hip-waders who stood up to their shins in wet cranberries while answering questions and chatting with passersby. In mid-October, it seems there isn’t anything lovelier than a New England cranberry bog, even if that cranberry bog is only a reasonable facsimile of the real thing.
Although I’ve never been much of a fan of cranberry sauce, I regularly drink cranberry juice. When I was growing up, my mom raved about the health benefits of cranberries, especially noting cranberries’ legendary ability to help women avoid bladder infections. The folks from Ocean Spray weren’t handing out any free samples of cranberry sauce or cranberry juice, but they were handing out packets of dried cranberries, which are just as tasty as a tall glass of cranberry juice. I guess that’s one more thing to be thankful for.
Click here for a complete photo set from the cranberry bog at Gillette Stadium last month. Whether or not you’re eating cranberry sauce this Thanksgiving, I hope your holiday is safe, restful, and happy.
Hoarded Ordinaries 
Nov 26, 2009 at 9:39 am
I love that top photo.
I used to get UTI all the time, and then a midwife told me to drink cranberry juice — and it really does seem to work.
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Nov 26, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Yes, I love that image of cranberry abundance!
I’m also prone to UTI, so when I travel and can’t be sure I’ll get my daily glass of cranberry juice, I take cranberry capsules. They seem to have the same effect as cranberry juice, although they’re not nearly as tasty.
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Nov 26, 2009 at 9:58 pm
There is a cranberry bog on one of my regular walking/running routes and it adds a whole dimension of day to day, week to week change. Especially exciting are the days when the tractors come along with their enormous rakes.
I love the top photo, too. It looks remarkably like the surface of my simmering cranberry sauce today (just a little more expansive), another view I’ve always enjoyed.
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Nov 27, 2009 at 7:49 am
Cranberry sauce may be my favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal, actually. Interesting to see and hear about where they come from! (I knew there were cranberry bogs, but I never knew about that harvesting technique.)
Thanks for your suggestion about bowing, by the way. We do bow in my Zen tradition, so I’ll keep that in mind as a channel of practice. I try to do some walking meditation, too, and that also seems to work when sitting is hard. 🙂
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Nov 27, 2009 at 5:20 pm
C, when “my C” and I were looking to buy a house back in the mid-90s, one of the areas we looked at south of Boston had cranberry bogs in the area. In fact, I think one of the listings we perused mentioned there being a cranberry bog on the premises: I’m guessing you could lease it out to local growers rather than attempting your own harvest. We ended up in NH rather than south of Boston, on a street named “Bog.” Apparently you can run from your destiny, but you can’t hide. 🙂
Steve, I forgot to mention walking practice, but that too is good. I really like chanting when my mind is really “stuck,” or I’m really upset about something: when my father was diagnosed with cancer several years ago, I discovered that you can chant and cry at the same time, and it’s very therapeutic. (My dad is okay now.) I think it’s a matter of finding a practice that “works” rather than trying to force yourself to do something that just isn’t working, for whatever reason. There are plenty of tools in the box, so use the one that works.
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