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KARE in the Air: Wisconsin Cranberry Bogs

Our continuing drone series takes us over a bog near Wisconsin Rapids where the juice you drink - or the cranberry sauce you eat at Thanksgiving - might come from.

WISCONSIN RAPIDS, Wis. — Before you spoon up some of those tangy, bracing cranberries to balance out the flavor of your epic Thanksgiving feast, you might want to consider just where they come from. 

And it's not that far. 

In this installment of our ongoing series KARE in the Air, our trusty drone hovers above a bog on the Rooted in Red Cranberry Farm near Wisconsin Rapids, WI, during the recent harvest. 

Farmer Rochelle Hoffman tells us many people think cranberries are grown in water, but she says operations only flood the bogs when it is time to harvest. That's because cranberries have four air pocket chambers that make them buoyant - when bogs are flooded they float - making it easier for farmers to scoop them up to be washed, sorted, sold and shipped. 

In the early days of the industry the cranberries were harvested by employees with rakes. Today, farmers often use a tractor to roll through the beds and mechanically knock the cranberries off the vine. , allowing them to float to the top.

Rochelle told Feast and Field that her family’s connection to cranberry farming spans more than a century. Her great-great-grandfather grew his first cranberry in 1900. Today, her parents live in the same house he did and still run the family farm along Wisconsin’s “Cranberry Highway.”

Although long known as “The Dairy State,” Wisconsin is also a major player in the cranberry industry. Whenever you see Ocean Spray cranberry juice on a store shelf, the cranberries are “likely grown right here in Wisconsin,” notes Hoffman. She says over half the world’s cranberries are grown in the state, including close to two million pounds harvested by the two companies that operate under the umbrella of Rooted In Red Cranberry Farm. 

 



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