Jersey Shore Magazine

j e r s e y s h o r e • F A L L / H O L I D A Y 2 0 1 6 65 continued on page 66 drive along the dams and show us the actual harvest. No, we don't get to stand among the floating cranber- ries, as I had hoped, or even get out of the bus. Turns out there are very strict USDA regulations regarding the bogs. In fact, workers must wear ster- ilized shoes into the bog. But we still get an amazing view from the bus windows and open door. We watch as a harvester passes through a flooded bog. As the harvester glides along the water, it releases a bobbing red trail of cranberries in its wake. Conner tells us it takes around twenty-four laps to harvest one bog. As one bog is harvested, another is being worked on by a gathering crew. Using a cranboom, the same thick yellow "hose" used to contain oil spills, the cranberries are gath- ered into one end of the bog. And though the day is slightly overcast, the brilliance of the red berries is hardly dulled. It's a fascinating and colorful process. Workers using leaf blowers blow cranberries caught at the sides of the bog to be gathered into the boom. Once consolidated, the cranberries are pushed onto a conveyer belt where they are dumped into a dump truck. Workers in the bog use the cranboom as well as "pushers" to get the cranberries onto the belt. "It's an extremely technical name for a cedar board on a stick," jokes Conner. From there, the load- ed trucks go right to the pack room where jets of water rinse the berries and keep them moving along for quick—about a thousand pounds a minute—and immediate shipping. Varieties & Recipes While there are over 2,400 variet- ies of cranberries, only a few dozen are grown commercially. At Pine Barrens Native Fruits, they grow about four different varieties and twelve "experimentals." Conner mentions that the Pine Barrens still attracts the "most prominent world blueberry and cranberry researchers." Conner even assisted Rutgers plant breeder Dr. Nick Vorsa on selecting the Scarlet Knight, a round cranberry that offers better physics for sorting. Her overall knowledge of the differ- ent varieties—and really everything to do with cranberries—is dauntingly academic. While this is an industry built on a rich history, it's clearly reliant on modern day science for financial survival. "I buy satellite images. Sometimes I can see a disease on the computer screen with filters before I can see it with my eyes in the field," mentions Conner. Will there be a sixth generation of Conner/Darlingtons to continue cranberry farming? Perhaps. "You're not allowed to grow up on the farm and stay here," says Conner. Both she and her husband want their chil- The Darlington floating picker brushing cranberries loose from the vine.

• Cover