Cape Cod Cranberry Day

Last Saturday, while on Cape Cod,  we stopped at the 

Thornton Burgess Green Briar Nature Center.

This is a cranberry bog in Sandwich, MA.:

Today, cranberry growers still follow many of the same principles used by nineteenth and early twentieth century growers.  Cranberry growers use flooding as a management tool to protect the plants from the cold, drying winds of winter, to harvest and remove fallen leaves and to control pests.  Cranberries have pockets of air inside the fruit. Because of this, cranberries float in water, and thus, the bogs can be flooded to aid in removal of fruit from the vines. By this action, cranberries are dislodged from the vines and float to the surface of the water.

It was obvious that this bog was recently flooded, however there were still many cranberries to be harvested.  

John picked a few:

We took a cupful home with us!

There was a demonstration of making cranberry jam in the kitchen and cran-apple crumble was baking :

This is what we bought:

When we got home I made some cranberry sauce with the cup of berries John picked:

I washed them well and then cooked them down in a little orange juice and sugar!

It's always fun to listen to the berries "pop"!

Have you ever been to a cranberry bog?

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A little side info:  Thornton Burgess, who lived in Sandwich, was the author of the Peter Cottontail series, inspired by Beatrix Potter's Peter rabbit.