The Million Cran March

(Editor's Note.... There may be a considerable delay between when you get the alert and when this article is actually finished, as I have to learn how to work the f*cking camera, it seems.)

The best way to win a VIVI Award for Sports Journaling is to go into the hospital for a week, then turn your journal into a Cape Cod photo-essay that has nothing at all to do with any kind of sport at all.

Ah, f*ck it... I already have one of those anyhow. Let's dig deeper into my pictures.

Before we do, it's funny to note that I don't have a digital camera.... I only have the little disc that goes in one. I have a neighbor with a digital camera (I bought the disc to match it), so I borrow it now and then when I feel like posting pics here. I have a regular camera, but there simply isn't room on my desk for a scanner.

I actually visited this same farm last year, and I sort of milked the same formula for this harvest. I actually tagged along with the owner this year, as opposed to my bothering the Portugeuse guys doing the actual grunt work last year.

Anywho... this is Buzzards Bay, MA. It's October of 2006, and they're about 2 weeks ahead of when they harvested last year. I read that as a harbinger of a bad winter, but neither boss I spoke with would commit himself to a prediction.

The two farms (on the same 1000 acre "plot") shown here belong to Mann Farms and R+B Farms. Mann Farms has about 50 acres set aside for organic cranberries, but they were sort of uglier than the chemically treated bogs.

The guy who runs R+B Farms didn't change his expression one iota when I was like, "Oh, I love R+B." Nice enough fellow, though...

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(Editor's Note 2... Always marry someone dumber than you are, even if you have to go to heroic lengths. The shadow at the bottom of the above picture is the Colonel, accidentally working himself into the pic.)

These cranberries below sort of floated up before they took the machinery to the bog. If you buy Ocean Spray, you may be eating/drinking these fellows before/during/after the football game.

 

Every now and then, I like to lean right over the water and get a pic like below. You already know that I'll drop the camera in the water someday.

The million cran march.

 

Not as if I'd do something like this... but if you want free cranberries, sneak into the bog at night with a Zip-lock bag and climb into the red truck's bed.. Valhalla, I am coming!

This is a Water Picker. It drives through the bogs and stirs the cranberries loose. The farmers don't use this particular set of words, but it makes more sense phrased my way... to me at least.

Here it is in action:

 

This pic only got blurry when I put it in here. I'll figure it out later, when the painkillers kick in.

Fill the truck with water, dump in a F-150 worth of sugar, then light it on fire... you'll have enough cranberry sauce for everyone in Rhode Island.

This is where the reservoir empties into the bog, making a cool Schmoo-like disruption of the cranberry blanket.

Another inexplicable blurring... I'd kill the photographer, except for the fact that I'm the photographer.

Because someone asked, behind ol' Sloppy Dog here is what a cranberry bog looks like when it isn't flooded, which is 11 months and 15 days of the year.

Is this tree like totally spooky or what?

 

October on Cape Cod ... foliage

 

Bournedale... ruff-ly the same area

 

Dog Meets Bog.... yet more cranberries..

 

 

Enough Beta Carotene To Turn A Baby Orange.... Pumpkins of all sorts

 

A Grassy Noel.....berries

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... Mann To The Fiz-Arm

 

Tags: cranberry, cranberry bog, Cape Cod, Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts,