((PKG)) CRANBERRIES   
((Banner:  Cranberries))  
((Reporter/Camera/Drone Camera:  Aaron Fedor)) 
((Producer:  Kathleen McLaughlin))  
((Editor:  Kyle Dubiel))  
((Map:  Cape Cod, Massachusetts))    
((Main characters:  1 male))   
((Sub characters:  1 male))    
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((David Ross, Owner, Cranberry Bog Tours)) 
Cranberries are a native fruit to North America.  They are 
only one of three fruits that were growing here before the 
Europeans came.  There were only cranberries, blueberries 
and Concord grapes here before the Europeans arrived.  
And so, the native Americans that lived here since, you 
know, who knows how long, how many thousands of years 
they lived here before the Europeans, they harvested the 
cranberries that grew here wild in the swamps.  
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((David Ross, Owner, Cranberry Bog Tours)) 
I think everybody's here.  Welcome.  Thank you everybody 
for coming.  I'm Dave.  This is part of my cranberry farm 
here.  I have 80 acres [32 hectares] of cranberries altogether 
on our farm.  I came down here after college and bought a 
farm.  I'd worked on farms in high school.  So, we started 
small and have grown.  We have farms all the way from 
about five miles [8 km] down the road to the west in East 
Sandwich.  
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((David Ross, Owner, Cranberry Bog Tours)) 
Well, the Cape is a good place to grow cranberries because 
the climate is right, the soil is right, everything is just right 
here.  I call it my Goldilocks theory.  There's no real school 
where you can go to learn how to grow cranberries.  So, I 
learned pretty much all on the job and then in 1986, I met an 
old guy, and I joke about, in the 1980s, there were no such 
thing as a mentor.  We just called him an old man.  He was 
the old man that had the farm next door, but he became my 
mentor and I bought his farm and he really showed me a lot 
of things that had taken him, his whole career, his whole 
lifetime.  
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((David Ross, Owner, Cranberry Bog Tours)) 
The water reel is the machine that knocks the cranberries 
loose from the vines.  We flood the bogs.  We run the water 
reel through.  The water reel breaks the cranberries loose or 
agitates them.  So, the cranberries float in the water.  After 
they are knocked loose or knocked off, we'll raise the water 
level up and then we'll come back in a day or so, gather 
them together.  We call it racking or corralling when we 
gather them.  And then we'll pump them out of the water with 
the big pump rig which separates the cranberries from any 
leaves or other debris that's in there and pumps the clean 
cranberries out of the water and into the truck to go to the 
factory to the processor. 
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((David Ross, Owner, Cranberry Bog Tours)) 
This is kind of a family business, a little bit of a family.  I 
started it. My son hopefully will take over.  He's involved now 
so.  
((NATS)) 
((James Ross, Son and Co-owner, Cranberry Bog 
Tours)) 
Well, I got into the cranberry business through birth, pretty 
much, born into it.  When I was growing up, I lived on about 
a 10-acre farm that my dad owns and operates.  And then 
over the years, he's expanded from there.  And then I started 
getting more into it, probably about eight years ago.  We 
looked at a farm together and we purchased it about five 
years ago.  And so now as partners, I play a little bit more of 
a role in that bog in particular and help him out when I can at 
the other places.  
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((David Ross, Owner, Cranberry Bog Tours)) 
The pandemic has really probably helped the business a 
little bit because everybody went into their stock-up-their-
bunker mode in the beginning.  So, we sold a lot of cranberry 
juice initially.  But in a lot of ways, it hasn't affected the 
business much because the cranberries don't care what's 
going on in the world.  The beauty of the crop and the 
natural world is, it's oblivious to what's going on in the 
human world.  The crop grows.  The cranberries grow, 
regardless of what's going on in the world.  
((NATS/MUSIC))