The Ocean County van trip yesterday was one of the best ever. Poor Susan, though: When I stopped for her for our walk, she said she had awakened with a bad toothache. She and Walter are leaving on Friday for their annual trip to Canada to see his sibs and she had to get to her dentist, who's up north. Upshot was she wasn't able to go.
The trip was great. It was a beautiful sunny day and, as these jaunts always do, it started at Wells Mills Park. Van was filled, of course, and it was a congenial group. We went first to Lee's Cranberry Farm and were met with the owner, Steve Lee. He's in a cooperative that makes up Ocean Spray. Boy oh brother, I never knew there was so much to know about cranberries. For openers, there's wet and dry harvesting; Lee does wet and we saw the machine that agitates the plants under water so they float to the surface. Learned that cranberries grow on vines close to the ground--two kinds, the ones that grow along the ground and the fruitful ones that grow up--and how they got their name (because a baby berry hangs from a tread and resembles the neck and head of a crane).
We spent more than an hour there, then went to the county's Cloverdale Farm in Barnagat. Had the lunches we brought at picnic tables, then got some informal, but interesting, spontaneous talks by our driver/guide, who's a naturalist.
After that, we picked cranberries. Hey, there's no way in the world you can appreciate farm workers without actually experiencing the hot, back-breaking work they do. We picked and picked, bent over because most of us were--uh, of a certain age, and probably couldn't have gotten back up if we sat. I tried out a metal--they used to be wood--cranberry scoop, but it kept getting snagged on the vines. However, Jeff, who works on the farm, was an expert and shared with us what he scooped. Home about 4:30 after a fascinating--and highly New Jersyan day.
Note: When I was a kid, Jersey was the largest producers of cranberries in the country. Now it's the third largest. (The first two? Who cares about those interlopers!)