Robin's Outdoors

This story originally appeared in Lancaster Farming in the fall of 2011. I spent a few hours with Kathy at her bog in Downeast Maine. It was a beautiful day. It was my first trip to a bog and I learned a lot.

Maine is an ideal place to grow cranberries. The soil is acidic, days are warm during the growing season and nights are cool. Natural springs fill ponds with fresh, clean water that can be pumped into bogs for watering and flooding.

It’s the third week of October and time to harvest the cranberries at LaPlant Family Bog. Kathy LaPlant and Sue Dall, who is an employee of Jasper Wyman & Sons, operated the water reel, referred to as “the buggy.” The women looked closely through an opening in the cranberries beneath them into the water for something that doesn’t appear to be there. Dall climbed off the buggy, looked into the water and deliberately moved her feet. LaPlant moved the buggy slightly back, then to the right while Dall kept looking. Dall climbed onto the buggy and they moved forward several feet. Dall picked up a pole from the back of the buggy and expertly jabbed it into the water with enough force to make it poke into the ground and stand straight up.

“Meet me down there!” LaPlant hollered over the noise of the water reel, motioning toward two pickup trucks parked further down the bog.  As LaPlant and Dall slowly made their way toward me on the reeler, berries bobbed to the surface in a straight row behind them. A slight breeze blowing in the right direction pushed them to the end of the bog.

Kathy LaPlant and Sue Dall work in LaPlant’s cranberry bog.

LaPlant and Dall backed the buggy up to shore, climbed down and started pulling plant matter out of the reel. “We were looking for the edge of yesterday’s work so that we could start again. We go over the berries twice. We go over the first row to get started then go over half that row again and start the next one at the same time. The poles mark where we’ve been so we know where we need to go,” LaPlant explained. Reeling the five acre bog takes a day and a half.

“Someone came in to do the dry harvesting for me last week. He used a machine for the first time. It’s much faster than raking them. In four hours he harvested 35 totes. That’s pretty good  with the learning curve,” explained LaPlant. Totes were stacked at the cottage. When the wet harvest is finished in a couple of days LaPlant will clean the dry berries. “The dry cranberries are the ones you see in bags at the store. They last longer than the berries that get wet.”

The cranberries are huge and beautiful. There aren’t many white berries floating on the water.  “They need warm, sunny days and cool nights,” Dall said. When they don’t get enough sun they ripen but they don’t turn dark red.” Dall broke a white cranberry in half to show the dark seeds in the center, an indication of ripeness. With 11 years of experience with cranberries, Sue Dall is a walking encyclopedia.

Cranberries float on top of the water

LaPlant added, “They use the white cranberries to make white cranberry juice.” The bog is half full of water during reeling. When reeling is complete, LaPlant fills the bog to have it ready for booming.

“The majority of cranberry growers are women out here,” said Kathy LaPlant. “The men grow blueberries and the women started growing cranberries. I thought if they’re doing it, I can do this too.” LaPlant manages LaPlant Family Bog, one of the aspects of her family’s business.

“When I started with this, cranberries were more lucrative than they are now,” she said with a slight frown.

The five acre cranberry bog

The LaPlants were harvesting trees on land owned by Murray LaPlant, Inc, the family business, when Kathy LaPlant was considering growing cranberries. “They had the heavy equipment out here thinning the red pine stand so it was convenient. They cleared this space. For a while it looked like a desert. They dug the bog and hauled in sand, installed the pipes and sprinklers. When the Tonka play was over and the fun stuff was done they left me all alone out here. I like it though.”

LaPlant lives at the bog for much of the growing season. It takes an hour and 15 minutes to drive from her home to the bog. During the coldest part of the season she has to be there to make sure the plants are protected from frost. “I turn on the sprinklers while it’s still dark and cover everything. It’s beautiful when the sun comes up. It looks like crystals when the bed is frozen.”

Kathy LaPlant untangles weeds and vines from the reeler.

“The first time I saw it I thought I’d killed everything,” Dall said. “I called and said I didn’t know what I did but I killed them. They said it was supposed to be that way. Now I think it’s beaitful. You can’t get it in a picture, the light is never good enough.”

“I used to sleep in my truck,” LaPlant explained. Then Murray gave me a camper. Let me tell  you something. I hate mice. I walked into the camper one day and there were four mice on the sticky trap. I slept in the truck again.” Murray LaPlant was Kathy’s father-in-law and the founder of the family business. “I asked Murray if I could sell the camper for the same amount it costs to buy one of those buildings the Amish in Smyrna make, could I buy one? He said yes so that’s what I did. Mice don’t get into the cottage because there’s no plumbing holes. There’s no way for them to get in.”

LaPlant provides food for workers during the harvest. They can go into her cottage to change into dry clothes, warm up and sit down to eat. The cottage is rustic, primitive and very cozy, especially for a building that has no indoor plumbing. The lights and heat are fueled by propane. It’s small enough for the heat generated by the propane lights to keep her warm on a chilly evening. Although the bog is located close to a busy highway, the area is isolated. Tracks left by a wandering moose show how large he is. “One night I could hear him walking up to the cottage. It was during the rut and I thought I wasn’t having any of that right outside so I hit the panic button on the truck and scared him away.” LaPlant has a sharp wit and sense of humor.

“It was  a lot of work getting this done. Natural springs fill the pond. We got the permit to use the water I need from the Department of Environmental Protection. It’s piped in there,” LaPlant said as she pointed to the area where water is controlled at the edge of the bog. “There are 160 sprinkler heads in the five acres. I water them when it doesn’t rain enough. A lot of people think cranberries grow in the water. Let’s get that straight now. They don’t grow in water. They’re watered like a crop and flooded when it’s time to harvest. When there’s going to be a frost I have to run the sprinklers to protect the berries and vines.”

“I use light chemicals. It’s not organic. If I had neighbors I’d have to notify them when I chemigate but since I don’t have neighbors that’s not a problem. I use chemicals for weeds and insects three times a year. I use them lightly, that’s why I still have some tall grass in places. My family eats these and I live and work in here so I’m careful.” Both concern for and pride in her product are evident in her voice. “I walk up and down the bog with 25 pounds of fertilizer in a hand-cranked spreader.” Her left arm holds an imaginary spreader while her right arm cranks its handle. Wyman’s buys these cranberries and tests them to be sure they’re safe before using them. LaPlant has been the top producer several years for farms in her size range.

“It used to be that the cranberries were all put together and used. Now they separate them and test them. That’s good. I want my name on my cranberries,” said LaPlant. “I’m proud of what I grow.”

Cranberries need to be pollinated so bees are brought in. “It’s good timing,” she explained. “The blueberries are pollinated before the cranberries. Wyman’s brings in bees for me and then when they’re all done the beekeeper comes to get them.”

LaPlant has the largest bog in the area. Other growers have larger total acreage but smaller bogs. One acre on the far end of the rectangular bog isn’t producing well. “It needs some work before spring. In the spring I’ll prune the vines and transplant them down there.” She grows the Stevens variety which she purchased from Wisconsin. They’re larger than other berries commonly grown in Maine.

Sue Dall explained parts of the water reel as she refilled the hydraulic oil. It’s a simple three-wheeled machine used to knock the cranberries off the vines. “The hydraulic system runs on vegetable oil. If there’s a leak during harvesting the berries are safe. It smells like french fries some times. We have to pull the plants out of the reel. She has some grass in here. One year we harvested in a hurricane. There were white caps and the wind blew us sideways.”

The bog is topped off with water when reeling is complete. The second part of harvest is spent gathering the cranberries. A leaf blower is used to blow them off the edge of the pond. Someone in the water rakes the cranberries away from the edge. The boom is put together, board by board, and maneuvered through the water to move the berries to one end of the bog. “This is the part of harvesting that people think of,” said LaPlant. “This is the part you see the most.”

On the final day, Wyman’s comes to get the cranberries. “They suck them up into a truck. The water goes out one way and the plants we missed go another and the cranberries are left in the truck.”

When the harvest is finished LaPlant spends time cleaning up and getting the bog ready for winter. It’s the last few days of peace and quiet in her cottage until spring comes.

Cranberries float to the end as they’re harvested, pushed by the breeze.