A Well Deserved 2 Weeks Vacation

The Life Of A Cranberry Grower

Brent has 2 weeks vacation coming and because he is a cranberry grower and spring, summer and fall are the busy times for cranberry growers he has to take his vacation in the winter when things slow down a bit. He decided he would take his vacation the first 2 weeks in February.....let the fun begin.

We spent the first week of vacation in Spooner, WI (our home town) taking the first steps toward building our new home. We are planning on breaking ground as soon as the weather breaks so we want to be ready!!!! I am sooooo excited for us to have our OWN home again. I miss having our own little sanctuary this side of Heaven. We spent a lot of our week contacting and dropping off house plans to prospective contractors. It is coming along and we expect to make some final decisions soon.

The Cranberry Harvest

This post is to be a tribute to my husbands hard work. He started building this 90 acre marsh a year and a half ago. They have 45 acres of vines in and planted right now and 45 acres ready to plant this spring. It has been a LONG HARD process. I am VERY proud of him, he is a very hard workin talented man and I am so blessed to be his wife!!!!

The Cranberries have been beat off the vines by what is called a beater and they are now floating. They are then gathered up by the float boards and loaded into semi truck trailers and shipped to Ocean Spray.

Cranberries being taken off the beds.

These berries are being shipped out to the fresh fruit plant.

The fresh fruit is loaded into the creates and are ready to shipping.

We took some time to do a photo shoot. Here is my daughter Kara, grandson Noah and August.

Grandpa Brent and Noah.

Myself (Granny) and Noah.

This is a picture last winter of the work in progress. These are cranberry beds being formed.

Here is my hard workin husband digging in his tool box.

Here is the reservoir he dug...amazing!!!!!

frozen reservoir

All the big equipment they use to do the excavating to make the cranberry marsh.

Here is Brent tending to 1 of his 12 newly planted cranberry beds. All the beds are 3.75 acres in size and amount to 45 acres of vines in the ground right now. But as I mention, he has 45 acres of vines to plant this spring. He will have a total of 24 beds that are 3.75 acre in size like this to take care of...WOOOO makes me tired just thinking about it!!!

New plantings. We spent a lot of time watering and babysitting these very tender vines until they took root.

This is a cool picture of Brent out in a cranberry bed checking everything over. It looks like he is in the desert.

Here he is setting his sprinkler heads. As you can see the beds are HUGE!!!

The sprinklers are up and running.

This bed is all planted and being watered. The watering is endless it seems until they take root.

A close up of the freshly planted cranberry vines.

1 of the 12 beds newly planted. It takes 3 to 5 years to get a crop of cranberries off a new bed.

I thought this was a cool site...the rain cloud in the back ground.

As you can see, there is a lot of hard work that has went into making this cranberry marsh. When he started, it was nothing but a very large corn field. He had to dig the reservoirs and all the ditches. Construct and level all the beds readying them for planting.

When I go out there, my head spins!!!! It is so overwhelming to me but he knows exactly what is going on and how to keep things running smooth. My pictures can not even begin to capture the massiveness of this project!!!!!

So we are now into the 2nd week of his vacation. We decided not to take a trip anywhere because we are building our house this spring and want to save our money for that. We are heading back to Spooner tomorrow to do some more leg work on the house project plus spend time with our family. All and all it has been a relaxing vacation for him. But it is back to work on Monday. And also back to work for me, I have not been able to get much sewing done so I guess you can say I have been on vacation too.

God Bless, Rhonda