Cranberry Season is Just Around The Corner!
One of the many incredibly wonderful things about fall on the Peninsula is the cranberry harvest. Weather usually turns cool enough to make bright red berries ready for harvest around the second week/end of October.
Most of the berries around here end up as juice, specifically, Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice. The color is exquisite and I hear our berries are added to less colorful berries grown elsewhere to get that signature claret color. Because they are juice berries, they are wet-harvested, which is something I never tire of watching (I absolutely do tire of putting on hip waders and participating!).
For 87 years now–EIGHTY-SEVEN years!–a celebration of all things cranberry takes place during the harvest. This year, the Cranberrian Fair will be October 10th, 11th & 12th and will include the ever-popular Cranberry Trolley, bog tours, food sampling, live entertainment, crafters and more.
“Cranberry Trolley?” you say? We used to call it the “bog bus” ;-). Beginning at Ilwaco’s Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum, the trolley car zips visitors up to the Cranberry Museum, just a few mile north. The Cranberry Museum is an under-discovered place. Year-round, you can take a self-guided tour of the ten acres of demonstration bogs here, and the museum and gift shop are open April through December (or by appointment). But during the Cranberrian Fair, docents are on hand to share the history of cranberry growing on the Peninsula as well as modern harvest methods. You can sip cranberry juice, enjoy live entertainment and purchase samples of cranberry products including fresh cranberries, all while getting your cranberry-inquisitive questions answered by knowledgeable staff and farmers.
Board the Trolley to head back to the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum where you’ll find a variety of vendors, offering handmade items such as pottery, jewelry, books, paintings, cranberry vine baskets, peach/cranberry pies, yard art, and undoubtedely more, given the creativity of the organizing group. There will also be a cranberry growing display, a number of raffles and locally-produced cranberry products from Oysterville Sea Farms.
I’m digressing for a moment here to tell you about another under-discovered Peninsula adventure: The Columbia-Pacific Heritage Museum. I’m convinced this building is under some Hogwartian spell. It doesn’t seem like a very large building, but once inside, it seems to grow and grow and grow. Every twist and turn between exhibits seems to contort the building until you feel like you’re in an ever-expanding, magical maze. It’s truly stunning how much they pack in, without it feeling at all crowded. Every time I take visiting friends or family into the museum (one of my favorite activities for visiting company), I am again struck by this phenomenon.
The Cranberry Trolley will run on the hour from the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum from 11AM until 2PM Friday through Sunday. Fair buttons are $5 each and cover admission to the festival activities at the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum, the Cranberry Trolley, and all events at the Cranberry Museum. Want to know more? Visit the Cranberrian Fair page, or call the Columbia-Pacific Heritage Museum at 360-642-3446.
Want to dry-harvest berries yourself? You can do that here, too. Stop by the Visitors Bureau for a list of locations.
Cranberry sauce is how I like these wonderful little things, and it may sound weird and even possibly endanger my reputation (as if), but here goes:
I stock up the freezer during the fall cranberry harvest with about 10-15 pounds worth in bags of 2 to 2-1/2 pounds each. Then I take one of these bags periodically and dump the berries into a big pot and add water about 2/3 of the way up, so the berries aren’t totally immersed. They’re still frozen, ok. Then I put in a couple of scoops of sugar (gasp!), this being maybe 2-3 cups; you will obviously add more or less sugar to suit your own unusual taste. Bring to a boil for a few minutes, stir occasionally and it all starts to make sense as the berries give forth their pectin or whatever biological product it is that makes them gel up at a time like this.
Some people like to add nuts, orange peels, you name it. After the stuff cools, I put it into small plastic bowls with a snap-lid possessing a capacity of about 1 pound (~2 cups), then into the freezer they go, save 1 for the fridge.
The result is great c-berry sauce for that Thanksgiving turkey dinner, but I enjoy it most often with a plain nonfat yogurt and a big handful of pecans…as a breakfast treat, and often.
It’d be fun to hear from other people about how they prep this fruit for consumption.
…Rgr
[...] first, I’m going to try cranberry-pecan yogurt for [...]
Recently visited Fort Casey on Whidbey Island and noticed red berries growing on overgrown thorny vines/bushes. They resembled cranberries. Do you know what they are?