Cranberry bogs

Viewing the autumn Massachusetts cranberry bog harvest (according to the Lonely Planet) is a tourist must-see. So B, A and I headed off with some American friends to a Harvest Festival out in the countryside on Saturday.

We were dreaming of a haze of scarlet fields, but once we'd paid $10 each for our tickets, for the first hour all we could see was fast food stalls, naff fairground rides and swarms of families - perhaps a thousand people. The Cranberry Festival staff didn't know where the cranberry bogs were.


Once we eventually stumbled across a cranberry bog, we were the only people there. Are we a bit weird? Why are we not on the Ferris Wheel like everybody else? There was a teenage goth lurking nearby in a Staff T-shirt. We asked her how the cranberries were grown and harvested.

"Dunno. I'm just here to stop people falling in".
So we did our own research. Cranberries grow on little bushes on swampy ground. At harvest time, the swamps are flooded, becoming cranberry bogs about two feet deep. Machines that look like lawn-mowers on stilts thrash through the bog, so that the berries separate off. They are gathered with giant nets.

There's a 1663 Pilgrim cookbook which has a recipe for cranberry sauce, while the Native American Indians used cranberries to bind wounds.

They did have a little train, so we succumbed to the kitsch and went on that - A's first ride on a train. She was gripped.



And I have to admit - we kind of enjoyed it too.