Is New Jersey in Drought and Will Dry Weather Hurt Cranberry Farms?

John Darlington’s family grew cranberries in South Jersey even before President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863. How about a Thanksgiving tradition?

“We weren’t the first, but we were pretty close,” said Darlington, a fifth-generation farmer in Pemberton Township.

Fortunately for Darlington, his fellow farmers and consumers around the world, the recent dry spell has not affected cranberry production or prices, at least according to Kate Leonard, a spokeswoman for the growers’ cooperative Ocean Spray.

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Darlington’s relatives began growing cranberries in 1857, when an ancestor fenced in bogs that had previously been used for strip mining iron from Pinelands soil. The bogs were already filled with naturally growing cranberries, which eventually became a staple in the area.

This year, drought-like conditions only delayed the crop’s colorful harvest season, which typically runs from mid-September to mid-October. Farmers needed about 10 additional days to pump enough well water to flood their bogs, according to a spokesman for the state Department of Agriculture. This is an essential part of the harvesting process.

Darlington said he had to tap into the water supply about 2 miles from his 300-acre site.

“Pumping water cost us many extra hours,” Darlington added. “I will walk a long way to get water.”

New Jersey ranked third among cranberry-producing states in the country last year, harvesting nearly 580,000 barrels of berries grown on 2,900 acres of wetlands.

It ranked first, behind Wisconsin and Massachusetts, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Garden State’s crop had a production value of about $20 million, ranking fifth behind blueberries, peppers, tomatoes and sweet corn.

The tart berries are deeply rooted in the area’s agricultural history.

“Burlington County is the second largest cranberry-producing county in the United States,” the county website states.

The cranberry farm founded by Darlington’s family was the state’s largest in the early 1900s, when it supported a company town that survives today as Whitesbog Village in Browns Mills.

According to its website, the village now includes restored cottages, farm buildings, a general store and gardens. It is surrounded by 3,000 acres of “cranberry bogs, blueberry fields, reservoirs, sugar sand roads and Pine Barrens forests.”

Another family member, Elizabeth Coleman White, helped grow the highbush blueberry in Whitesbog, creating an even greater crop for the Garden State.

White was recently inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame and also wrote a book on cranberry farming that became a standard guide for the industry, the website says.

It also highlighted a more recent development in cranberry farming: tours for people who want to observe the harvest.

The picturesque process begins when the moors are flooded and the purple berries – still hanging from bushes or vines – float to the surface. A tractor then pulls a harrow through the turbulent water and separates the berries from their plants.

Workers use booms to trap the berries in bright red puddles so they can be picked and processed.

Once this is done, the water is pumped back into a reservoir. It will later be spread across the moors to protect the vines from the winter cold, Darlington said.

And the berries? They might show up at your Thanksgiving dinner.

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter at the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and Daily Journal. Email: [email protected].

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