Life Annual Guide 2016

A brief history of the cranberry—Cape Cod’s most important fruit

Cape Cod Life  /  2016 Annual / , ,

Writer: Ellen Albanese / Photographer: Jennifer Dow 

A brief history of the cranberry—Cape Cod’s most important fruit

Life Annual Guide 2016

Cape Cod Life  /  2016 Annual / , ,

Writer: Ellen Albanese / Photographer: Jennifer Dow 

barrels HHS (800x556)

Courtesy of the Harwich Historical Society

Raneo said that in those days, children in Harwich were excused from school for two weeks in September to pick cranberries, and two weeks in the spring for strawberries.

When he was a little older, Raneo secured a job wheeling boxes of berries off the bogs. “I liked that better than being on my knees all day,” he recalls. Raneo earned 10 cents for each cranberry box, which measured about 18 x 30 x 8 inches.

Raneo left the bogs for road construction work and eventually became highway surveyor for the town of Harwich, a job he held for nearly 25 years. Today, he volunteers in the Harwich schools, teaching children about local history and the Cape Verdean experience.

The late 1800s and early 1900s were prosperous times for cranberry farming. In 1888 the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers’ Association was formed, with a goal of standardizing barrel size, establishing uniform pricing, and improving marketing. In 1910 the Cranberry Experiment Station research facility was established in Wareham, under the leadership of Dr. Henry J. Franklin. In 1920 Oscar Tervo invented the first mechanical ride-on dry harvester, and a telephone frost warning system was developed. In 1930 Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc. was formed as a grower-owned marketing cooperative; Lowrance writes that Ocean Spray, which is headquartered in Middleboro today, was created by the merger of the AD Makepeace Company in Wareham; New Jersey grower Elizabeth Lee’s Cranberry Products Company; and Marcus L. Urann’s Cranberry Canners, Inc. of Hanson, Mass.

Cranberries require very specific growing conditions: acid peat soil; an adequate fresh water supply; sand; and a growing season that stretches from April to November, including a dormancy period in winter that provides an extended chilling period, necessary to mature fruiting buds.

Pictures of flooded bogs have created the popular misconception that cranberries grow in water. In fact, the fruit grows on vines in impermeable beds layered with sand, peat, gravel and clay. These beds, commonly known as “bogs,” were originally made by glacial deposits. Normally, growers do not have to replant since an undamaged cranberry vine will survive indefinitely. Some vines in Massachusetts are more than 150 years old.

Ellen Albanese

Ellen Albanese is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Waquoit. Ellen has written many feature articles for Cape Cod LIFE, including stories about the “target ship” in Cape Cod Bay, the 1996 moves of Nauset and Highland Light, and the 1939 grounding of the Lutzen—a.k.a. the “blueberry boat”—off Nauset Beach.