Cranberry Festival – the cranberry sequel

This weekend was the annual Cranberry Festival down in Waltham. Since we had so much fun last year, we decided that we had to go down again. When we arrived, the first thing we did was board the Cranberry Express to go out and see the Bogs. Our friends, Roger and Nieca, met us down there to enjoy the Cranberry Festivities.

 

When we got out to the bog, we got to see them wet-harvesting. They flood the field and all the cranberries float to the top, and then gather them in and suck them up using a giant cranberry vacuum pump into a big cranberry truck.

 

 

 

 

While we were out at the cranberry bog we got to see the owl show that they had last year. We got there just as the show ended, so we didn’t get to hear all the cool stuff about the owls, but we still got to see some friendly familiar faces. What do owls have to do with cranberries, you ask? Well, I’m not sure, actually. Maybe they eat cranberries. . .when they’re really hungry, and they can’t find any mice. . .

So after that we got to walk around in a dry harvest field and pick cranberries. It was really weird, cause we were basically standing on top of a 2 foot tall cranberry bush, walking around, but apparently it doesn’t really hurt the plant. Kaela picked cranberries and ate them, and insisted that they yummy and not yucky.

     

 

Roger got to do some cranberry harvesting.

 

Kaela got to look at the Cran-choppers and ride in a cranberry-barrel train,

we got to see some Cranberry clowns juggling and look at really neat looking cranberry tractors,

and all in all we thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it. . .

. . .oh, except for the spiders. Apparently flooding the cranberry fields displaces all the critters that live in there. So the roads next to the water were covered with swarms of spiders. I thought about chasing them into the woods to see if I could find an enchanted Ford Anglia, but I thought better of it.

 

All in all, we thought it was a good activity as we wind down our stay in New England.