In Oregon, cranberry growers have plenty to be thankful for. This year, drought jeopardized the harvest on the south coast.
Jerry Walker grows organic cranberries at Brush Prairie Bog in Curry County. Last year, Walker lost much of her crop to bugs and to a herd of elk that broke in and gorged themselves right before harvest. This year, her berries thrived but the severe drought that parched Southern Oregon posed a problem.
“It was a very dry year. Of course with flood harvest, you need a lot of water to flood your bog. When we tried to start flooding, all the water started disappearing. It was wicking, it was evaporating,” she said.
Farmers in the area had to postpone their harvest for several weeks, Walker said. But a heavy rainstorm soaked the ground and flooded the bogs. She says in the end she got a good yield, about five thousand pounds of cranberries that she will sell to the natural food distributor Hummingbird Wholesale in Eugene.
There was more good news for Oregon’s cranberry farmers in 2014. A change in trade regulations has allowed them to ship frozen cranberries to China for the first time. Oregon is fourth in the nation for cranberry production.
Watch the process of cranberry harvest from the perspective of a cranberry, shot and produced by Oregon Field Guide:
Copyright 2014 Oregon Public Broadcasting
