You may notice water covered with floating cranberries these days if you drive past a cranberry bog.
The cranberry harvest is underway.
"We are loading trucks with the fruit that we just picked yesterday and then after we picked it yesterday we raised the level of the water so the berries could be corralled into the corner. The berries float so we corral them into the corner and then we use a berry pump to suck the fruit out of the water, clean it and load it into trucks.” said, John Moss Owner of Elm Lake Cranberry Co.
This year's harvest is expected to exceed last years, up about 100,000 to 4.9 million barrels.
But, farmers have still had their fair share of difficulties fighting against drought conditions most of the summer.
"We should have a decent crop this year although harvest might be tricky for a lot of growers because we’ve had very little rain this year. All of our ponds are down significantly I think for us this is the lowest our reservoirs have been in thirty years.” said, Moss.
The booming industry is one of a kind here in the Badger State.
"Cranberries are the states largest fruit crop were the official state fruit and Wisconsin leads the world in cranberry production we’ll do about a little over 60% of the us crop this year it’s about a billion dollar industry here in Wisconsin providing thousands of jobs for Wisconsin residents.” said Tom Lochner Executive Director of Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association.
The harvest will be going on over the next few weeks, which means more farmers will be sharing the road with their tractors and trucks.
Be sure to slow down and give them extra space.
