Thousands of years ago, the receding glaciers left a series of kettle hole ponds filled with sand, clay and other debris across South Shore of Massachusetts, Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, creating the perfect habitat for cranberries.   Wampanoag’s took advantage of these wild plants, harvesting wild cranberries, long before the first European settlers ever arrived. When the English arrived, they were unsurprised to find the cranberry growing here, as they were already familiar with European varieties of cranberries. They had many names for the fruit, but the most commonly used term was the “craneberry,” so name due to the flower’s resemblance the head of a crane.

Cranberries weren’t cultivated until the early 1800s, when it was discovered that the plant grew better when sand was spread over it. Farmers then began replanting cranberry vines, and regularly covering the plants with layers of sand. As the practice caught on, and the business of growing cranberries became more commercialized, many landowners began converting existing wetlands (peatlands, bogs, and wet meadows) into cranberry bogs. In the 1920s, the cranberry business was so pervasive in the local economy that Massachusetts children could be excused from school to work in the bogs during harvest season.

Today, although the demand for cranberries remains high, economies of scale have shifted the major cranberry producers to elsewhere in the country. Many small-scale local growers, no longer able to compete or simply having no descendents willing to take on the trade, are selling bogs that had long been in production. In Falmouth, many of these parcels are purchased by land trusts, conservation organizations, or the Town for habitat restoration and the preservation of open space. Although large scale projects to actively restore cranberry bogs are taking place, such as Tidmarsh Farms in Plymouth, more often these areas are simply left to restore themselves.

It was in one of these abandoned bogs that I went to collect cranberries today. Although no longer managed for cranberries, the plants still remain and still produce fruit. Many people think of flooded bogs and floating berries when they think of harvesting cranberries, but they can also be “dry picked”. The bog can be somewhat soggy and rubber boots are generally a smart choice of footwear (although the drought this summer left the bog quite dry), but the berries can be picked directly off the low-growing plants. Within about a half an hour, my boyfriend and I had collected two bowls’ full of cranberries, that I’ll use soon to make jars of homemade cranberry sauce.