Twain's Feast - Andrew Beahrs [116]
Now Robert is happy to talk about how the language of sailors survives in the bogs—coming out of a bog is called “going ashore”—and how whaling vessels once carried cranberries against the scurvy.17 But even if the bogs are talked about as bodies of water, even if hundreds of postcards show cranberries bobbing merrily during harvest, cranberry vines have to be dry for a good portion of the year. Too much water, like this year’s heavy spring rains, can hurt the all-important pollinators—the Keeses just lost two of their three beehives. And, even worse, too much water makes weeds go wild.
“People always think the big problems with growing organically are going to be pests,” Kristine says. “But pests aren’t so bad. I saw a presentation once where an entomologist wrote the names of four major pests up on a board, then crossed three of them out. She said we wouldn’t have to worry about those, since without spraying we have enough natural predators to take care of them for us.” Sparganothis fruitworm, for example, attracts birds and other predators, which is why the Cranberry Hill bogs are surrounded by birdhouses for nesting swallows (as well as bug zappers the size of bedsprings). They’ll also flood the bogs in spring, “holding early water” for longer than conventional growers to limit the spread of cranberry fruitworm larvae.
But the main problem, Kristine says, is “weeds—weeds and yields.” Even in a good year, weeding by hand is a long, laborious, exhausting job. It’s also an expensive one; the labor costs would be prohibitive if it weren’t for what Kristine calls the “woofers.” World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (or WWOOF—“woof”) is an organization that matches young travelers interested in organic farming with local producers who need cheap labor. Cranberry Hill provides room and board and experience; the woofers weed. It’s a huge savings of labor costs and helps the Keeses to continue growing without herbicides, maintaining the bog as a vibrant ecosystem.
“We bought the bog from a conventional grower, and he was saying, ‘Oh, you gotta spray, you gotta spray,’” Kristine says. “Robert asked him, ‘But what about all the crayfish in the ditches?’ He said, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that, it’ll kill ’em all!’” She laughs. “When we started, we thought organic was the wave of the future. And it’s true, people are willing to pay a premium for healthy food, grown without chemicals. But that’s not why we do it. People are always finding clever ways of killing each other—we mostly wanted to maintain the land and keep it healthy.” Of course, healthy land and productive cranberry land aren’t always the same thing. “A few years ago, we had an entomologist come out—when she lifted up some of the vines, she jumped back and said, ‘This is alive—I’m not used to that!’”
Down on the bogs, Robert runs a picker over the vines (the fire, fortunately, remained on the far side of the watery ditch, which is intended in part to protect against forest fires). Dry pickers are built like push lawn mowers, but instead of a hidden, spinning blade, the teeth of a steel comb sweeps berries up and into a series of trays, which empty into a wooden box under the handle. Robert leans backward, restraining the picker as though holding back an ox, slowing the machine’s progress to allow the teeth more rotations. A cool breeze blows through the pine trees and yellowing elms; the bog has a warm, reddish tint, as if the grass had begun to blush.
In the steep, inaccessible ditches, a worker named Amanda harvests with a scoop (Robert buys them for about $250 in antique shops; a new one is twice as much). “If it’s hard, you’re doing it wrong,” he coaches her. When I try scooping berries, I realize at once that I must be doing it wrong—it’s hard. The scoop is rounded on the bottom, and getting the lower berries takes a particular rocking motion,