tlambert
PMA Member
Well, another cranberry harvest has come and gone up at my parent's place in Wisconsin. The outcome was great, but the process to get there was a bit more bumpy than usual. We ended up with a great crop and a lot of tired help.
Here's one of the cranberry beds in the first stages of flooding. We call this a beater flood, which means its just deep enough to run the machines through to knock the berries off the vines.
Here's my dad running the beater. We used to do the whole cranberry bed with this but a few years back they came out with a device that mounts on a tractor that more than cuts the time in half that it takes to remove the berries and is a lot easier on the vines. We still use the beaters to go around the edges though.
Here's a pic of that other piece of equipment. Its called a "Ruby Slipper" Yeah, classy, I know
Here's what things look like after the berries are off and the water is up to the level we need to float them.
Next up, we float the berries down to one end to pick them up. We have flexible "float boom" that is basically foam with a chain running along the bottom for weight. We pull this with tractors. The tractors have blowers mounted on them that blow the berries away from the edge of the bed. Forgot to get good pics of this part, but I did take this cool looking pic that shows what's going on.
Once we get the berries corraled down to one end, we drop in an elevator that takes the berries and dumps them into a dumptruck. The little red chevy dumptruck with the blue hose running into is is a "trash truck" As the berries go up, the elevator pumps out leaves and runs them into this truck. Kinda of pre-cleaning before they get to the cleaning machine.
Next up, the berries are hauled to our cleaning machine(which again, I forgot pics. I was too busy with the pick up to get up there) Anyways, with this machine, the berries are dumped onto a conveyor belt that takes them over a steel grate that has a huge blower under it. All the leaves, grass, and other trash are blown straight up and out a chute into the back of another dump truck while the berries roll across the grate and onto another elevator that takes them into an open top semi trailer.
Here's what a loaded trailer should not look like. This was our first trailer where we found out that the 5th wheel on the new(used) semi tractor wasn't gonna hold a load.
After they're loaded, we have a private hauler that comes and picks them up and takes them about 5 miles to a recieving station.
The most fun of the weekend was late sunday afternoon just after the hauler picked up our last load. He called a few minutes later to let us know that the chains had broken in the trailer and the sides were ready to burst and we should probably bring a dumptruck over to pick up berries...Great! And I was just gonna take a quick nap before driving back down to IA. Well, my dad and I got there with a tandem axle dumptruck and a couple 5gal buckets. In the next 2 hours, the two of us transferred over 10,000 lbs of berries from the trailer to our truck. Who knew 5tons of cranberries could make your shoulders so sore the next day?
Here are a couple other pics from the weekend.
-Lesson learned, wear boots that fit
-This guy kept getting in the way
-Break time!
-One of the lift pumps used for flooding
Here's one of the cranberry beds in the first stages of flooding. We call this a beater flood, which means its just deep enough to run the machines through to knock the berries off the vines.
Here's my dad running the beater. We used to do the whole cranberry bed with this but a few years back they came out with a device that mounts on a tractor that more than cuts the time in half that it takes to remove the berries and is a lot easier on the vines. We still use the beaters to go around the edges though.
Here's a pic of that other piece of equipment. Its called a "Ruby Slipper" Yeah, classy, I know
Here's what things look like after the berries are off and the water is up to the level we need to float them.
Next up, we float the berries down to one end to pick them up. We have flexible "float boom" that is basically foam with a chain running along the bottom for weight. We pull this with tractors. The tractors have blowers mounted on them that blow the berries away from the edge of the bed. Forgot to get good pics of this part, but I did take this cool looking pic that shows what's going on.
Once we get the berries corraled down to one end, we drop in an elevator that takes the berries and dumps them into a dumptruck. The little red chevy dumptruck with the blue hose running into is is a "trash truck" As the berries go up, the elevator pumps out leaves and runs them into this truck. Kinda of pre-cleaning before they get to the cleaning machine.
Next up, the berries are hauled to our cleaning machine(which again, I forgot pics. I was too busy with the pick up to get up there) Anyways, with this machine, the berries are dumped onto a conveyor belt that takes them over a steel grate that has a huge blower under it. All the leaves, grass, and other trash are blown straight up and out a chute into the back of another dump truck while the berries roll across the grate and onto another elevator that takes them into an open top semi trailer.
Here's what a loaded trailer should not look like. This was our first trailer where we found out that the 5th wheel on the new(used) semi tractor wasn't gonna hold a load.
After they're loaded, we have a private hauler that comes and picks them up and takes them about 5 miles to a recieving station.
The most fun of the weekend was late sunday afternoon just after the hauler picked up our last load. He called a few minutes later to let us know that the chains had broken in the trailer and the sides were ready to burst and we should probably bring a dumptruck over to pick up berries...Great! And I was just gonna take a quick nap before driving back down to IA. Well, my dad and I got there with a tandem axle dumptruck and a couple 5gal buckets. In the next 2 hours, the two of us transferred over 10,000 lbs of berries from the trailer to our truck. Who knew 5tons of cranberries could make your shoulders so sore the next day?
Here are a couple other pics from the weekend.
-Lesson learned, wear boots that fit
-This guy kept getting in the way
-Break time!
-One of the lift pumps used for flooding
) so its a pretty good deal!
