Why Farmers Flood Cranberry Fields

This lake just turned blood red. It's really a farm field, flooded on purpose. Underneath the water are cranberry vines. A machine with spinning beaters churns through them and knocks the berries loose. Each cranberry has four tiny pockets of air inside, so millions of them shoot to the surface at once. Floating booms sweep them into a corner, and a pump sucks them into a truck. Cut one open at home, and you'll see those four air pockets. This 3D animation shows a wet cranberry harvest. Cranberries grow on low vines in beds that stay dry most of the year. At harvest, growers flood a bed with about a foot of water, and a water reel, nicknamed an egg-beater, knocks the berries off the vines. The four air pockets in each berry float it to the top, where booms gather the crop for the pump. Most cranberries are picked this way and go to juice and sauce. In the film the berries rise and gather in seconds; on a real farm it takes much longer. #Shorts #Cranberries #Farming