During the Cranberry Harvest visitors are
always welcome. The warehouse is open 7 days a week, September
15 thru October 20. Monday ~ Saturday 8:00-4:30 and Sundays
10:00-3:00.
Your tour starts at the warehouse with a 10-minute videotape
taking you through the seasons on a cranberry marsh. You can
take a step back in time when you enter the sorting room where
the cranberries are still hand sorted just as they were 50
years ago. Sample some cranberry juice and other cranberry
treats of the day. Look at the variety of foods and products
made with cranberries. The remainder of the tour is self-guided.
The warehouse staff will show you where the crew is working
and you can walk or drive to a closer parking area and watch
the cranberries being harvested. If you have any questions
please come back to the warehouse, the staff is always available
to answer your questions. Group tours of any size and Bus
tours are welcomed ~ please call ahead to make arrangements.
Fridays at 10:00 a complete guided tour is offered.
Tours can also be arranged during the growing season starting
in June.
All of the tours are free.
info@alderlakecranberry.com
In addition to watching
the unique harvest you might see some of the local wildlife…we
have ducks, geese, eagles, osprey, great blue herons, sand
hill cranes, and swans. Some are just here for a day or
so as they pass through the area during their annual migration,
some stay through the season. The deer abound in the area,
but generally come out at night; you might see a few wandering
around. We had two moose sighting in recent years; they
also pass through the area. Two years ago a mother bear
decided to den up for the winter near our irrigation pipe
storage area, (she had twins that winter)! The red fox,
otter, beaver, and raccoon are also frequent visitors.
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Alder Lake Cranberry has been here since 1946. We are a family
owned, independent grower striving to grow and harvest the highest
quality cranberries possible.
The majority of our crop is harvested with cranberry
beaters, and bulk loaded into semi-trailers to be used for
processed juice and sauce. The beater method does not handle
the cranberries as gently as fresh fruit pickers but they
are cleaned and sent to freezer space quickly to insure good
quality. From the freezer the manufacturer makes juice concentrate,
strained sauce, whole-berry sauce and sweetened dried cranberries.
The fresh cranberries which are sold through
the warehouse and which you see in the grocery stores are
harvested and handled quite differently. Cranberries to be
sold as fresh fruit are harvested with cranberry "pickers",
these machines have metal "teeth" which gently pull
the berries from the vine. The cranberries are deposited in
metal "boats" which are pulled alongside the pickers.
From there they go into large grain wagons and are pulled
to the warehouse where they are unloaded onto a conveyer belt,
which takes them to the de-grasser and dryer (a large piece
of equipment which has air blowing up through the mesh floor).
To insure good keeping quality the cranberries must be dry
before sorting or storing. The cranberries at this point can
either ride a long conveyor belt to the sorting room or be
stored in drying crates (specially built boxes which are constructed
so that when they are stacked air flows through and around
the berries) each box holds approximately 35 #. The next step
in the fresh fruit process is sorting. The cranberries are
emptied into the mills from the drying crates. The mills in
our warehouse have a patent date of 1932 stenciled on them.
The mills have a roller bar which turns and the cranberries
bounce over 7 wooden boards, good cranberries bounce, soft
(frozen) or damaged cranberries fall straight down and are
conveyed to a refuse bin. The lively cranberries roll into
the sorting room where workers sitting alongside a moving
conveyor belt carefully look over them and pick out light
colored cranberries, stray stems, and any damaged berries
that did get into the sorting room. The last stage depends
on which side of the sorting room the cranberries exit, to
the right they are bulk loaded into cardboard boxes for fresh
orders or large bins for the warehouse sales. If they exit
to the left they are conveyed to the packaging machine, which
weighs them into 1# portions which are then bagged and sealed
and packed into boxes. (24 1# =1 case)
At one time all of the growers sorted berries with this method
but as the times changed so did the methods of harvest. Nowadays
only 5%-10% of the crop is harvested for fresh fruit use.
There are only a handful of growers in Wisconsin that go the
extra distance to put out a fresh hand sorted product. Alder
Lake Cranberry is the only marsh in Manitowish Waters that
has sorting rooms.
To ensure the highest quality our cranberries are sorted as
needed for orders so they are always fresh!
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