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Cranberry farming has changed over the last century

A fifth-generation cranberry farmer says a lot has changed in the 101 years of her family farm.

Lisa Potter with Cutler Cranberry Company north of Camp Douglas tells Brownfield in the 1920s, it was a much different cranberry market than today. “Everything, of course, was sold fresh. We didn’t have any of the wonderful products that we have now like juice or sauce, or sweet and dried, or anything like that, so everything was boxed up and sold for fresh, usually transported on trains.”

Potter says in the early 1900s, the Native American community was instrumental in harvesting cranberries. “They would actually move their entire families to cranberry farms sometimes, and the women and children would go out and harvest the beds that had newer vines on them because they would actually hand-pick them, and then the beds that were more established, the men would go out on with hand rakes.”

Now, Potter says mechanization and a core group of 30 employees divided between two farms handles most of the work. “We’ve integrated different equipment, computers, GPS, sorting machines, things like that as they’ve become available in several different parts of our farming operations.”

Potter is confident the cranberry market has a good market with a little room to grow, but that will depend on innovation and developing new cranberry products that consumers like.

The Potter family now has fifth, sixth, and seventh generations working on the farm.

Audio: Lisa Potter discusses her cranberry farm’s long history and changes over the years with Brownfield’s Larry Lee