Good Day Uncut: Pine Barrens Cranberry Farm Tour

Philadelphia, we are uncut. Oh, I've been looking forward to this one all week long. We are live in Burlington County. Any guesses where we're at right there? Oh, yeah. It is at Cranberry Bog, New Jersey. One of the leading producers of cranberries. We're in the top three here. So it goes Wisconsin, Massachusetts, New Jersey. So good to be right here. We're going to walk through the whole process of what it's like to grow cranberries, how the weather plays a role both for good and for bad and we're going to go over and show you get a harvest so we're doing so much over the course of the hour with this beautiful farm first and foremost great to see I'm Drew what's your name Tom great to see you what's the name of the farm here Peter H. Budan D'Sons Inc. So I see this hat do a little fit check can I assume I know where these cranberries are going for sure that anti-freeze spray they spearhead the whole industry. This is really neat to see this and what's going on? This is our cranberry beater for knocking the berries off the cranberries off. So all right walking through the process here before we can even harvest them what is this gentleman doing right there? Well he's actually beating the cranberries off the vines and the berries go float to the top of that water. Oh because they have like some air in them there's some air pockets. Yeah they're light and then as soon as the machine comes out of the bog he's done just picking we'll put a full head of water in here and And then the boy's going with the waiters. Oh, yeah, we saw them. We're going to see them coming up a little bit. Yeah, and then they corral the berries up with the cranberry material. And then we have a regular elevator that goes into the corral pool and then goes into dump trucks, and then we take them off to our cleaning operation. I grabbed some pictures of that to share with everybody. So this is one of the first steps. Cranberries grow on the vines. You put a little water in there. He goes down there, gets the cranberries off. They flood it more. And then these particular bogs are going to be renovated because they've seen better years. Are you talking the ones back there or the one I'm looking at right now? The ones over here you're looking at. It's coming here with the new varieties. Oh, so there's research that's constantly happening to make sure you're keeping up with trends and what's going on just in terms of the growing season. Some of your cranberry vines will go to a point where they're just vegetative. They don't throw any more flowers. Well, hold on a second. We can't have that. We need to make sure our Ocean Spray is getting the cranberry juice, right? Yeah, 10-4 on that. Who's doing some of the research on that? Is that local to find some of the good? research at the cranberry station they do a lot of research yeah yeah we have scientists come out we have all type of diseases here I guess that's anywhere and we have to control so it's constant challenges so one of the things that I know is so we'll go back and look at this guy over here who's getting ready to get some more cranberries off I noticed right where we parked it looked like there's something you'd see when there's an oil spill what is that right there that's used for the corral that's got a skirt underneath it and stays under whatever little chain that's styrofoam tubes on top and that keeps the berries corralled when we load them up so that's how you loop them all that once they get floating in the bog so once you have them once it comes they they got right there that guy got they got beaded off the vine they're floating you corral them up with what we were just looking at and then we're going to see the guys in the waders pushing them in to get them sucked up yeah they'll be loading the dump trucks that's pretty cool then we have our own cleaning operation we clean before they go down to the receiving station Chatsworth there's a spray receiving station we say cleaning you're washing them off and what getting rid of some of the ones that aren't up to quality some of the rot yeah we only get paid on usable fruit of course yeah so we got you got leaves and some some weeds yeah and grasses that come out and then they go down to be weighed in down at the inspection our station down Chatsworth so the cranberries speak for themselves but i'm looking around your farm here in Burlington County let me just show the fall color i don't know if it gets better than this think about this this is your office window how does it feel to have this? this is, I come here every day so I take it for granted, look at this for us just watching right now, it's a slice of heaven right here, yeah, we're gonna have a cold weekend coming, you'll see better color after this weekend too, tell you what, I bet you're watching the weather a lot, I bet that is huge, we're our own meteorologist to be honest, we were watching we have to watch it constantly for drought for frost, do you have a weather center? we have weather station, little weather station, yeah, measuring the temperature humidity temperature let's get into the frost, so let's pretend it's a month ago, you didn't even mill them, you didn't even get any of the cranberries floating just yet, there's going to be a night with frost, what are you going to do to protect the crop? the severest part of frost was April, was April 20th and 21st this year, yeah, yeah, they are commodity, other commodities got hurt badly, yeah, peaches for example, I, I grew up in Chester County, very still and I'll tell you a funny story, I used to always go to this county fair and you could win peaches at one of the carnival games, not this year, it was just corn from the local farm, sure, they're really, they bring peaches in stands are bringing peaches in from outside in order to sell peaches, oh here in New Jersey I had to, in some places they had to yeah that frost was so damaging for the stone for crops they got her and grapes got her and blueberries got her so varieties what about the cranberries what about your cranberries sprinkled we're fortunate we have these sprinklers that sprinkle to protect the cranberries so let's Let's break this down a little bit more. If there's going to be a night with frost, strictly once the growing season starts, like you mentioned in April, you're spraying throughout the night, and that prevents frost from forming? Well, it forms an ice coating on the berry, but the heat of the berry itself takes care of itself. Get out of here. It's like an igloo effect. I could see that. Well, people have talked about how when you have snow, it's an insulator. I did this one time. This is going to be so random. I went to Antarctica, and you could go sleeping in the snow. You put the snow as a blanket above you, and I'm like, what's going on? But no, it's an insulator, so that makes a lot of sense. It takes good care of it, I can tell you that. If you didn't have them, you'd lose it to frost. They'd just turn, berries turn to water inside. Anytime the temperatures get to, what, the 30s, you're keeping an eye on it, and you'll turn on the irrigation, the sprinklers? Yeah, we turn on the sprinklers. All the pump houses are running, then the boys come out at night. We have them come out with lights, and they shine up all their sprinklers. Wow. And if they're not flowing, they've got to go out and make them flow. I guess that's probably the biggest thing. You can't afford that to get frozen. Do you want to walk down to where they're harvesting some of the berries right here? Boy, this is just a treat to be out here. What are some of the other challenges that you run into besides weather when it comes to just farming in general? Well, we have an IPM program, an integrated pest management program, and we go out at nights and sweep for insects because the insects come up to feed at night. What kind of insects are we talking? Caterpillars of all types. Okay. So it's not the birds you're worried about, or are you worried about birds? Blossom worm is one worm we're worried about. It eats the blossom, cut the blossom right off. Oh, jeez. You get no berry there. So we spray for them. But we have thresholds for different insects. We have thresholds. Sure. If we do a sweep, do 25 sweeps is considered a set. We come up with anything over five blossom worm, we're going to spray. Oh, I bet. If we spray less, we don't spray. We try to preserve, you know, we try to keep as friendly as possible. Of course. The farm, and then don't spray if we don't have to. How many bogs you got, by the way? So I'm looking at one of these bogs right here. Just give me some context of how big this is. How many acres is one of these? So for scale, a Walmart, like a super Walmart, is about two acres. So imagine like two and a half Walmarts. That's how big this, for lack of a better word, this pond is. But this is really just a bog. People have a misconception that cranberries grow like rice that doesn't grow in water. They like dry feet. They're like a houseplant. Yeah, it's like shrubbery. I saw that driving in. When we were driving in, there was like a bunch of shrubbery out in the distance. and then that's before it gets flooded and then we saw what happens there they're kind of beating it down to get them to flow take advantage of the air and the cranberry i'm noticing all the sand the dirt over there what's going on in that bog that we're looking at how we're going to restore that bog we're going to we're taking some heavy stuff out and bringing in good sand they like good sand good drainage coarse sand so you rotate the sand we've heard about farmers rotating crops you'll change out the sand that's not so much the sand change you want to get rid any clay or heavy soil you have yeah take it out and put coarse sand for drainage and you get that lower pH four to five you want for great growth so that's more acidic it's my understanding when it comes to we always think about New Jersey and blueberries among the tomatoes and peaches blueberries love acidic soil and i've heard that pine helps make that happen yeah so when you grow cranberries is that kind of acidic as well oh yeah you take a lot of the farmers from way back they transferred from cranberries to blueberries to cranberries but their soil is pretty much very similar really that's pretty interesting yeah and we have an interesting story about going back a hundred years about how there used to be a lot more cranberries across New Jersey there's still plenty now but then things switched to blueberries we'll explain why that happened right after this as we walk our way down to where they're hauling The cranberries, wait till you see this production coming up in just a few minutes right here live on Fox 29 and Fox Local Philadelphia, this is good day on cut, gotta tell you Burlington County looking tasty today, oh we are ready for some cranberries, we are here in New Jersey, it is the cranberry harvest season, did you know New Jersey a leader in the U.S. when it comes to cranberries, move over Wisconsin and Massachusetts, New Jersey in the top five, number three and then I heard Canada, I heard Canada does a lot of cranberries too, British Columbia, they run hand-in-hand with New Jersey pretty much on volume, why do they have similar soils, that sand in there, what do you think there are more peaty soils up there, peat, what's that? I don't know what that is, just woody soil, okay, peaty breaking down so the bottom line is when you grow cranberries you need soil where the water can really drain well, that's number one priority drainage, why? Well, you don't want anything to rot and the roots will rot, got it, and it's it's that's paramount, it's no question, we keep water in our ditches all the time so they can suck water up from underneath, yeah but we don't flood them, never flood them until we pick them, I'm just looking at this over here, I'm looking at the operation, we got guys coming out right here thank you by the way i gotta tell you they're so hospitable here at the farm you guys all right we'll send them a lunch break just so you can cover this live they're getting back in and this is what life is like on the farm here in New Jersey this time of the year these guys you know what they do they start growing the next season in the spring in fact even in late winter we got a greenhouse here we got to see and they start the next vines there in February gets planted around Memorial Day and then it's the whole season leading up to right here here we go the workers are going in you know I didn't bring my waders but I don't mind getting a little wet these guys are doing the heavy lifting and you saw what we're just talking about how they kind of corralled all the different cranberries. So let's talk about the growing season a little bit more. I saw the greenhouses. February, you're getting the next season started. Yeah, we buy the sticks of certain hybrids we want to get to put in the farm on bogs, new bogs. And those hybrids, it's just to keep up with different trends? You know, some species aren't doing as well than others? Yeah, and some of these new hybrids, they try to establish more, as far as rot is concerned, more rot resistant and also higher yield. If you can find that combination, we're putting them in. So that's what we've been doing. Are you growing anything else here or is it you all in on cranberries? That's all. I used to grow a lot of blueberries and cranberries both here. Hey, tell me this story about how there was a lot more cranberry farms about a hundred years ago in New Jersey and then why we switched to blueberries. Well, they didn't completely forget the cranberries, but they had to go to blueberries to generate revenue because we had a false blossom disease back in the 20s, 1920s. So diseases are just part of farming in general. It happens to all different types of crops. It's part of the environment, no question about it. Oh, look at this, we got, check this out. The fresh cranberries are coming right on down. I'm like, oh, who's spraying me? I'm glad it wasn't a bird. You know, on this show, I had a bird drop a little something on my shoulder one time live. That is so, so cool. They're getting crowded, coming right on down. Here, I'll take a little peek. I'll use my long arms and take a little peek and see what it looks like in there. It's just neat to see this process. Here, I'll walk down a little bit more. So they're coming right up here to go where we were. So I see them. Are they rakes? What are they doing to push that in there? What's going on there? Well, they're pushing the berries up onto the elevator. The berries, they come up to the truck, and when they get a full truck, they take them to our cleaning operation. You know what's cool? I'm looking right over your shoulder. Stay right there. That is a cool shot. We got the Ocean Spray hat where your cranberries are going in. Oh, yeah. Can I come down and buy cranberries, or are they all going to Ocean Spray? They're all going to Ocean Spray. Well, Ocean Spray, I'm sure, thanks you. Yeah, they're the ones that promote the industry. They spearhead the industry. Wouldn't be what it is, but what's the process like? So what's the process like? So the cranberries, they're going in right there. They're going into the truck. They're going to go get cleaned, like you said. Then where are they going? How are they getting those? After they get cleaned, they're going into a 40-foot trailer, and we send the 40-foot trailer down to Chatsworth. They get scaled on weight, and also there's a lab on the side. Oh, so right down the road. That's where that community is. I don't mind getting a little wet, a little raindrops on me from that up there. They have a lab down there that takes samples of the berries, and then you find out what's useful and what's not useful. And then from there, what happens? They go into cold storage. There's a water thing. You've got to get them. Oh, so you've got to freeze them right away, or you could lose the crop. They could start rotting. You've got to do that. So can I go on the other side of this? I want to get, like, the full perspective. I just think it's so neat seeing how stuff works behind the scenes. We got to do that earlier this week in Bucks County at the WM facility where we got to see where our trash goes and check this out right here boy this is scenic All the colors out here that's that makes it really pretty you're not kidding the contrast the colors the fall reds on the leaves in the distance yeah you can't beat this picture it's beautiful it is this is just incredible how long does it take to get the cranberries out of the box here so did you start this morning when did you guys get started about a couple hours this will be out oh wow yeah down the road do you think it'll be frozen by the end of the day tomorrow no no another day okay so it takes about a day to do that we have to get them evaluated and then put them right in the truck and they take them to the storage right away that's what it's about this is cool i'm gonna i'm gonna zoom in and get a closer look at that it's all cream premium material that we use around the breweries now we do our process a little different from other growers some growers the biggest grower Bill Haynes right on he has a pump high power pump and he's sucking right out of the ground what's the difference between using a pump or doing something like this so just kind of pushing him in and he does a lot of buying he's the biggest farmer in the country i got you so he's got a lot more acres how many acres you got here i'm thinking about well we had 285 and it was seven a bit but we're picking probably around 250 right now you guys got some real estate around these spots oh yeah the farm's 1600 acres and we have a lot of water you need the watershed for cranberry it's got to have water source good water source is it easy to get water we're gravity fed water here that's awesome it's all gravity fed we're fortunate. Some other growers don't have that, luxury. They have to use wells. I hear you're five generations. Yeah. What's that been like? This is your family's legacy. For you personally, when I think about five generations and going back over the years, what's it mean to you? Well, it's just like I used to have the opportunity to get involved in the farm. Yeah. I was going to get into my own business somewhere. I didn't and my uncle decided he wanted to sell, so I bought his half out and then pretty cool everything just went from that point and I just Now I have a manager, Rusty, who's going to take care of the farm in the future. He's going to keep it going. Yeah, and I love how you guys are planning ahead, not only for who's going to look after it to come, but even just right over there. We're looking just straight ahead those fields. You're putting in some new sand and things like that. Oh, they're going to renovation. We're putting all new hybrids in. We're not stopping. Yeah, that's what you've got to do. It's a major capital investment. You've got to put back into where you're taking from. That's the key to this business. That's so well said. What's this gentleman doing right here pulling that? He's smiling. He likes being on camera. Yeah, you look good. We're showing you off. So that's just to kind of help get those cranberries in place, get them over. Well, this helps. You see here, and like I speak of Rusty and his father, they're essential. I mean, they're part of the farm. They're investing in the farm. Boy, this is a sea of reds with that contrast. And Rusty's very capable. He's done very well as manager, and he's very capable of sustaining the farm. So I'm very fortunate to have good people. It's great to hear. We'll be right back right here live on Good Day Uncut, watching the cranberries coming out of the bogs in New Jersey. So here we are. We are live in New Jersey. We're in Burlington County. We're right down the road from Mount Holly, about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia. So many cranberry farms. You're thinking New Jersey, it's blueberries, peaches, tomatoes. Well, let's keep that red going from tomatoes to cranberries. I got to tell you, as you look around and all the work you guys put into it, you got to feel so good about this year's crop. How's this year's crop compared to previous years? It's better than last year. an average crop for us, but last year it was a low crop for us. Why do you think that was? Drought. Wow. Plus some of the vines are just not putting out like they used to. They're going sterile on us. They're older vines. So that's why you're bringing in new varieties, new hybrids. Sustainability. We've got to bring new hybrids here. Yeah. They're constantly. I mean listen, this is your livelihood. Oh yeah. You're at the mercy of the weather too. That's also all the people who work here. That's their livelihood Well said. So it's important that we bring capital back into our business right here. So here's what we did a little bit earlier. We went to your cleaning facility i took some pictures because it's just going to take a while to get down there and what i want to do with you i was thinking i could have you just kind of scroll through some of the pictures and walk through the process of what's next once we leave the box so hold that for me just swipe to the left and let's take a look and just kind of so here we'll start with the other one go back to and uh walk me through what we're seeing here this sort of dump trucks will back back up to this and dump into this big vat yep they got a conveyor pulling the berries going up top to the detrashing belts and they take the rot and any other grasses or uh how would the belt know that how would the belt by the firmness of the berry got it it's a bouncing principle but if they're firm they bounce down to the bottom they're soft there's a little texture in the belt it'll take them over the top and that's your those are you won't get paid for anyhow you want them out of there absolutely going down to the bottom let's see that right there oh i got the whole snapshots here i'm going to bring it back up so we were just looking at let's see that's a finger well there's a finger table oh here let me go back the other way all right so okay so there we were here's your belts and my belt's constantly rotating that's taking your rod over the top you're taking the firm firm berries drop down to the bottom put it down again all right then it's this is the belts taken to the feeder this is that oh you know i think we're going the other way now you're in the right place yeah here they are oh that's the mulch yeah yeah this is so cool what you see right here well it's got some different vines and things like that so it becomes mulch the stuff you don't use and then this is the sorter aspect of it that's a pin that takes the pinhead a real small instead of board on the binding don't get any size that takes the pins right out i got it here we'll swipe to just like that to the next one yeah Yeah, this is your belt, showing how belts go around and track your belts, taking the leaves out to the top, any rot out to the top, firms are bouncing to the bottom. That's so cool how this all works and how this all kind of gets put together. And then this is kind of the sorter little spot. I saw that, the different colors, you said the pinheads, every of the tiny ones, they get sorted out, they go through this conveyor belt right there, some of them fall out, and then the mulch. I mean, look at it, this is the leftovers, this is what you don't use. Yeah, it's a byproduct. and then show the truck we're loading you know this is so cool so we go from this is the leftovers the mulch there's the mulch pile and then the finished product gets loaded right into there into that truck and then here we go there's those beauties going out into Burlington County inside the bulk trailer right there and it all gets started right here in New Jersey that's so cool Yeah, I think it's cool. I think it's pretty cool. All right. Well that is looking for some more cranberries. We're coming right back live in Burlington County from the ranch with the workers and the cranberry bog to the beautiful colors on the trees in the background. What a great day here on Good Day Uncut. Tell you what, that fall color is looking pretty good. It's true. True, the cold really gets the leaves to change. You see their leaves out in the distance. They're gonna be going because we're dipping down into the 30s. So you have a frosty night on the way. most likely this coming week will be easier that you harvest some of the box oh yeah we got them behind us we don't have to worry about it yeah because otherwise you're going to be out all right after today we'll have two sisters left that's like nine you say it like it's nothing that's a lot that's a lot of cranberries no but we do two homes a day how many cranberries do you think you're grabbing out of here if you're gonna guess i mean obviously thousands of thousands yeah well this boat could this boat could put out yeah you can put out three trailers three that side three 40 footers pretty impressive trailers look they're waiting for the whole truck to come in this trailer holder probably 300 barrels so you're looking 900 barrels next truck's ready to come in fill it all up and that's what these guys are waiting for because you know you fill up the trucks you got to get the next one to come in you get the cranberries to go so you can figure approximately 900 barrels here barrels 100 pounds that's a lot of cranberries let me take a look around the corner here because i didn't even realize as we were talking the truck went away they went and took all the the cranberries that we started out with to that cleaning facility where we just looked at the pictures this little elevator is still going in comes the truck we're gonna watch them get in place oh I can't even do this in Philadelphia he's a good parallel Parker I bet you know what it comes with the territory out here what's it like getting down in the box I see all the guys got waders on there yeah they have to wear waders of course it's a pretty Unfortunately, the weather's been pretty good the whole harvest since the start of the day. How has the rain affected things? We had such a soaker last weekend, a couple of the weekends. We had a good growing season because of the rain. The season was off on showers. Look at that. I think there's a bird or a little hawk just right up there. And then the second the truck came, you know what these guys started doing? They started loading it up. So check this out right over here. Here it comes. It helps the size of your cranberries as well. Oh, it makes them bigger. yeah more juicy you know I went over to a blueberry farm they said the same thing when there's a drought they may not be as plump but the flavors could be more concentrated same for grapes you do get some nitrogen from the rain nitrogen helps as well what do you mean by that I don't understand that from the atmosphere there's nitrogen oh that's true I mean I've heard that in particular with say lightning look at this coming up that that is such a cool shot I love it thanks for doing this thanks for having us thanks for educating us I'm more than happy to, and please buy us some great products, number one. Hey, keep this guy in business right there. We'll leave you with a look at Burlington County, New Jersey, Cranberries. We're one of the top producers in the United States, number three, and there they go on their journey to your Thanksgiving table and beyond. We'll see you tomorrow.