The Cranberry Harvest

This Season a prosperous One for Practically Every Grower in Wood County

Surnames: ARPIN, BENNETT, BLACKSTONE, BRIERE, FITCH, GAYNOR, LESTER, LIPKE, POMAINVILLE, SEARLS, SPAFFORD, TRAHERN, WILLIAMS

You can tell the cranberry grower on our streets today by his hustling activity, by the numerous mail orders he carries in hand for the fruit which his marshes have produced in large crops proportionate to the acre investment and the yield of other years. His purse is bulged with the golden reaping and his success is directly felt in business circles. The picker, transporter, merchant, and the community have all been benefited by a good crop with good profits. Exact statistics of the yield are not yet at hand, but can probably be given within another week. The Spafford and Trahern marsh at Walker yielded about 1500 barrels; Searls Brothers harvested 1400 barrels; Lipke and Williams marsh 300 barrels; Pomainville and Briere at City Point between 1100 and 1200 barrels.

E. J. Dean, special correspondent to the Chicago Record, whom the Reporter mentioned locally week before last, was a recent guest of W. H. Fitch at Cranmoor for two or three days and while there took copious notes of the cranberry industry. Mr. Dean sent an extended report of his observations to the Record, a part of which was published by that paper. We clip the following with due credit to Mr. Dean:

There is probably no business today in the farming line in Wisconsin that pays so well as raising cranberries. A. C. Bennett & Son, whose cranberry marsh is five miles north of Cranmoor, raised this season, on seventy acres, 2,400 barrels of cranberries, which are now gathered and in their storehouse, and if sold at present prices, would bring about $14,000, and as the expense of raising the 2,400 barrels would not exceed $5,000, he will realize a good profit.

All other cranberry growers in this district have done proportionately well this season. Gaynor-Blackstone company, 1,600 barrels on thirty acres, C. E. Lester & Co., 800 barrels on twenty acres; Arpin cranberry company, 1,000 barrels on thirty acres; W. H. Fitch & Son, ninety barrels on two and one-half acres.

It is a familiar site to see several hundred boys and girls, Indians and whites, down on their knees, scraping in double-handfuls from the vines into tin pans, buckets and baskets, seventy-five to 100 bushels an acre. Fanning mills, made for the purpose, clean off grass or other refuse and assort into two or three grades. The sight causes the observer to jump to the conclusion that here on these marshes of Wisconsin, which can be bought in the raw state for a dollar or two an acre, is the place to get rich.

This is an ideal year. Never such a crop before has been grown or gathered in better shape. W. H. Fitch, secretary of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers' Association, sums up the drawbacks thus: "The most serious drawback is the winter killing the vines. If there be sufficient snow on the vines they will survive the winter, or if they be covered with water. The second drawback is the blight, and this is a term applied to all blossoms that fail to mature fruit. One large grower - Mr. Gaynor - estimates his loss this season from that alone to be 600 barrels out of a possible 2,200 barrel crop. He believes the blight was caused by leaving the water over the vines after the buds had begun to open.

The next drawback is the insects -- grasshoppers, fireworms and fruit worms, like worms in apples.

The fifth drawback is early frosts in the fall. There has been some damage this season, but so insignificant that it is hardly worthy of mention.

Forest fires are the sixth drawback but the danger to the crop from forest fires diminishes each year.

Hard times is the seventh drawback. Cranberries are a luxury and when times are hard sales fall off, and prices decline."

The crop of this cranberry district, which is about two miles wide and about seven long, is nearly all in the cranberry houses. At the lowest estimate the net profit this season will be at least $100 an acre.

Judge John A. Gaynor of Grand Rapids is largely interested in cranberries and is an authority on the subject. He says that northern Wisconsin has produced more wild cranberries than any equal area on the globe and are the best of the kind of any in the world. "The dry season," he said, "of 1893, '94 and '95 and forest fires that prevailed swept out 90 per cent of the wild vines and since then the great bulk grown have been planted vines. Wisconsin maintains experiment stations for the purpose of collecting and cultivation of cranberries and distributing information to cranberry growers. Botanically the cranberry grown here is the American cranberry and is different from any other grown. There are three leading species of cranberries in Wisconsin and the Wisconsin berry excels the eastern berry, although it belongs to the same species. It has been longer ciltivated in Massachusetts and New jersey, but the finest varieties are found here. There are only two species that are grown here that are marketed. Sometimes the other is gathered at experimental stations in the Fox River valley. We bring species from Massachusetts, Michigan, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Nova Scoria, Norway, Russia, Siberia and Saghalien Island north of Japan. In all we have collected 140 varieties. The merits we are experimenting on and hope to produce new varieties by hybridizing.