CRANBERRY HARVESTING - Why do they flood the fields?

have you ever wondered how they farm cranberries we know that they flood the fields but how does it all work and how come you've had cranberry sauce and cranberry juice but you've never eaten a cranberry before the channel is down here live and today we're on a cranberry farm i'm gonna show you what this machine does and why they flood the fields so many berries that's amazing and take you through the whole process from field to your hand i got the cranberries it's like a ball pit for adults [Music] i think if i wanted to be a farmer i'd want to be a cranberry farmer it's not all sunshine and cranberries it's pouring rain today and the cranberries are not cooperating we're supposed to be pumping them out of that corner and they've all floated to this corner making things very difficult i'll get to that in a minute let's go back to when it was sunny and explain how all this works cranberry is a weird fruit why don't we eat it like strawberries or raspberries or blueberries any other berry it's kind of like an apple like a sour apple oh it's really good it's because the human palates become quite sweet we like sweet foods cranberries quite tart quite bitter so we tend not to eat them dwight quite dark this is brian and this is brian's farm the bog riverside in langley bc and his job is to get the cranberries from this to this but of course that's easier said than done now you could farm cranberries the traditional way like strawberries or any other berry and pick them by hand but there's so many would just take so long the smartest way is to flood the field and the way that works is because cranberries float and the reason cranberries float is because they're hollow on the inside so the air bubbles help them float in fact when they're on the plants underwater they already want to float you just have to use this machine to kind of beat them off the bush a little bit it's actually a really simple machine the horizontal bars that are spinning at the front simply knock the bushes underneath hard enough to knock the berries off the plant and you can see here behind the machine where the cranberries are floating to the surface after it passes by [Music] so it'll take brian about two days to plow churn i'll have to ask him what you call that machine call it beating eating that machine we just called a beater like an egg beater pretty self-explanatory it smacks the fruit off the vine so the cranberry plant doesn't grow very tall it might have roots here but it might spread out and you might be picking berries from it six feet away it kind of is just this big thing which makes it really easy to operate a machine over top and not worry so much about ripping up its roots but it's very important that you operate the machinery in the same direction every single year you see the plant grows in the same direction as the machine passing over it so if you drive the machine in the opposite direction the plant will get caught up in the machine it'll churn up the plant and rip out the roots and destroy the plant so each year you have to operate in the same direction as you did the year before that when there's no water in the field it's really easy to see all the plants growing in different directions depending on which row it's in it's kind of like when you mow a lawn and there's a dark strip in one direction and a light strip in the opposite direction well the cranberry plants do the same thing i think we can all see why this is brian's favorite part of the job it's beautiful it's calm it's quiet and it's kind of like a cranberry [Music] zamboni [Music] come over here i want to show you the difference between the berry underwater and the berry once it's been churned as you can see the berries underwater are already floating they're just not released from the bush yet that's what the machine does and they don't grow in the field like this you only flood the field when you're ready to harvest so there's a field there that hasn't yet been harvested so you can see it's dry it looks like a normal farmer's field with low-lying bushes and you could walk through and pick all the berries yourself individually that would take forever so they have these big banks this is a river that goes by they'll pump it all into here flood it and then just makes really light work for one person to clear a field in two days instead of probably hundreds of people look how thick this is [Music] like there's so many so many berries that's amazing i can't even dig a hole to it so brian is getting close to finishing this one he'll finish it by the end of today but he has a few other fields that he needs to beat and that'll take another day or two so i'm gonna leave and i'm gonna come back in two days see as they wrangle it all up which luckily for you is happening right now and that was easy for you wasn't it but here it's been two days since it's rained it's flooded the field all the beating is done and now we're pumping out the cranberries well if you're new to the channel i'm mike the channel's called downey live it's an adventure behind the scenes channel where we do all sorts of interesting things my saying is i don't know where i'm going next but i know i want you there with me which is true so subscribe and join you know give it a shot it's free to subscribe and you can always unsubscribe later so why not but i think it's worth it and interesting and i'll try and keep this coming for you every single saturday so welcome to the channel and uh let's get back to this there's just an offer here with the beyond gotcha a cam lock hose coming on it oh yeah you can see it go there yeah and it's actually like you stick the fingers down there and it will it'll suck it in it hurts i'll believe you so brian wrangles all of the cranberries to one corner where it gets sucked up by this big pump and then it's all pumped through this big hose all the way to this tower that sits above the truck this is where the cranberries meet jack brian's father so the biggest issue up here are all the branches and sticks getting caught in the grates so it's jack's job here to clear it out keep it all flowing smoothly the water and cranberries flow out of this hopper over a grate the water leaves and sticks fall through the grate separating from the berries which are now falling into the truck below the water and the leftover junk gets pumped down into this truck where the water will then be filtered out back into the lagoon and the remnants here will just get composted it's a nice little cycle [Applause] once the truck leaves you have an hour to wrangle another truckload's worth of cranberries into this corner before it gets back because you don't want the truck waiting yeah the cranberries are not cooperating with us right now the truck and the pumping station is at the far end far corner of the field and the wind seems to have pushed all the cranberries here to the furthest point making it extremely difficult for us to get them over there once brian showed me how to do it he didn't waste any time in putting me to work and having me help pull a hundred thousand pounds of berries i know they're floating so it's not as difficult as pulling a hundred thousand pounds along the ground but still it's not easy work this doesn't necessarily look that difficult you just think you're pulling some berries that are floating along it's gonna be pretty easy what you don't realize is all these berries are gonna fill the equivalent of two semi-trucks so i'm essentially pulling we'll call it two semi-trucks plus the friction of the water and the light breeze that is against us which is what pushed all the berries into that corner in the first place so i am you know not to toot my own horn but uh brian here left me out here on my own so i am ugh doing a strong man leg competition here you're welcome if you're having cranberries this season you're welcome and remember we only had an hour to do it in a couple truckloads here and i'm gonna come back do that later [Music] now brian's not the only one doing this out here there's about 80 cranberry farms in british columbia so if you live in this province and you go to the grocery store there's a 1 in 80 chance you are eating one of these cranberries but for me i'm lucky they've got a little store inside so i'm going to get my cranberry juice my cranberry sauce and can't come to a cranberry farm without buying fresh cranberries as well even though i wouldn't traditionally eat them maybe i should it's a whole family affair here we've got mandy his wife with the kids and his mother working inside running the store and outside is brian in the fields and he just loves it i can i can see why now so for this holiday season instead of just getting cranberry sauce and cranberry juice i think you should get some fresh cranberries as well give them a try let me know what you think of them in the comments but also have your family and friends try them too and have fun watching their faces and you grow to like them they're they're pretty good anyway if you enjoyed this video i think you're gonna like this video as well so you can watch that now by clicking it or if you're new here you can click on my face to subscribe and that way i get to see more videos like this in the future i'm mike the channel's downey live i don't know where i'm going next but i know i want you there with me thanks for watching see ya

Channel: DownieLive

Views: 2,611,344

Keywords: downielive, cranberry, cranberry sauce, cranberry juice, cranberry recipe, cranberry farm, cranberry harvesting, cranberry harvest, cranberry farming start to finish, farming cranberries, canada, canada farm, canada farming, farming cranberry, harvesting cranberries, harvesting cranberries in water, british columbia, langley bc, langley farm, langley bc canada, thanksgiving, thanksgiving dinner, thanksgiving cranberry sauce, thanksgiving cranberry recipes, cranberries, farm vlog

Id: H8NMzQns3xw

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 17 2020