As people gear up to make cranberry sauce and desserts to be enjoyed around the table this holiday season, they may not know that cranberry farms are cramming a massive amount of work into the 60 days leading up to Thanksgiving to get those cranberries and cranberry products in stores.
On this episode of “Dan Does,” host Daniel Geneen visits a cranberry farm to learn how owner Keith Mann prepares his berries for Ocean Spray’s holiday harvest, during which the company harvests and processes over 130 million pounds of cranberries in a couple of months.
Cranberries can be one of the most challenging crops to grow. The process starts on Mann’s and many others’ farms, where entire bogs of cranberries are harvested in just a few hours. Once all the farmers have harvested their own cranberries, they all come together to get weighed for Ocean Spray. “It’s a bunch of family-owned businesses pooled together to create this,” says Mann. “It’s a grower-owned cooperative.”
Watch the full video to see how cranberries make their way from the dry field to holiday tables across the country.
