Bogs, Frogs and Cranberries

Beautiful cranberries:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=123155&id=510568119&l=903c876e7b

I expected to be impressed by lots of things when I started travelling - the Taj Mahal, Niagara Falls, American portion sizes, etc. Cranberry bogs were not one of these things. In fact, I didn't even know cranberries grew in bogs; if pressed I probably would have guessed they grew on bushes or trees somewhere, but I hadn't really given it much thought. Turns out, cranberries are amazing. They grow on bushes in huge bogs, mostly in Massachusetts, Wisconsin and other northern US states and parts of Canada. When the berries are ripe, the bogs are flooded and a special harvesting machine is driven through them to knock the berries off the vines. The berries float to the surface of the bog, creating a spectacular sea of bright red, before the farmers corral them into a corner and more machines suck them up and spit them out into the back of a truck waiting to take them off to market.

The cranberry harvest takes place in late September/early October, and as soon as I saw a photo of the flooded bogs I knew I had to find one and take many photos, as well as get my hands on the brilliantly named Cranberry Bog Frogs, the local chocolate/cranberry/caramel/cashew nut taste sensation. We had expected to see bright red bogs all over Cape Cod, but as our trip went on and the cranberries were stubbornly refusing to need harvesting I took matters into my own hands, hired a car and booked a tour which guaranteed a trip to a fully operational bog. It was great. Pouring with rain and freezing cold, but great nontheless - the plant kingdom's version of the Christmas Island crab migration (well, there were lots and lots of small red things all in one place; you get the idea). See a bit of it for yourself courtesy of Youtube and Good Morning America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENaPmfJtdcE Crantastic.