Cranberries
IQF cranberries are prepared from the sound, mature berries of the commonly cultivated cranberry plant. The product is prepared by extra sorting, cleaning, and frozen by IQF method to assure a wholesome product, ready to use.
Farm
Our modern commercial beds are manmade and use a system of canals and water storage to create a controlled wetland environment ideal for cranberry production.
The cranberry season begins in winter when we flood the beds with water that freezes and insulates the vines from winter kill. As the winter snow melts and spring arrives, the bogs are drained. Toward the end of June cranberry blossoms begin to appear. This is when our professional beekeepers bring hives with Honey Bees to the bog. These bees will pollinate the cranberry flowers during the next two to four weeks.
In mid-July, petals fall from the flowers leaving tiny green nodes which, after weeks of summer sun, become red, ripe cranberries.
We typically harvest our Cranberry beds around mid October. The beds are flooded with water, then a "lady slipper" cranberry harvester is used to loosen the cranberries from the vine. With small air pockets in their center, the cranberries float to the water's surface. They are then boomed to the edge of the bed and pumped from the bed into specially designed sorting equipment where water, leaves, stems and other debris is separated from the cranberries. The cleaned cranberries are collected in big totes and trucked to our state of the art processing and freezing facility in Machias, Me.
Did You Know?
Wild Blueberries contain significant quantities of both antibacterial and antiviral compounds, and have a reputation in northern Europe of fighting infections. They may also help protect against heart disease.
