Saturday, October 10, 2009

The Cranberry Festival

The area we live in supplies Ocean Spray with many of its cranberries, so there's the Fort Langley Cranberry Festival to celebrate the fact! It's actually quite fun. Last year we attended but only had a short time to walk around because I had to go cook at Earl's. Well, today we experienced the whole thing!

Have you ever seen a field like this and thought "Well, they say it's a cranberry bog but I really don't see any berries?"


You have to take a closer look.


When the berries are ready to harvest, then the bogs are flooded. The machine below - a beater - then drives through the field to separate the berries from their runners, and up they float.


Then all the cranberries are pulled together using this rubber band.


Then they are sucked out of the bog, washed, and the process of turning them into juice begins. Did you know that 95% of all cranberries grown are used for juice? The other 5% are used as fresh cranberries in products, turned into wine, dried into delicious snacks, or...


used to create a cranberry bratwurst! Believe it or not - absolutely delicious.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

That's great! Mol and I recently had apple brats that were good too. Fruit in brats is a true treat!

Millie said...

So interesting! Cranberries are one of my favorite foods.