By Mark Loehrke

From the Holiday 2006 Issue

Lake Magazine covers the hottest information on the Lake Michigan area.

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Given the time of year, it’s probably best to get this out of the way right upfront – actual cranberries do not, in any way, resemble that quivering cylindrical curiosity appearing on your celebratory holiday table.

Period.

Nevertheless, the cranberry owes much of its popularity to its inclusion in these traditional iconic feasts, regardless of form, so it suffers the indignity of its annual canned presentations without complaint. Still, you don’t build a $215 million annual agricultural industry for one of North America’s few native fruits on the strength of just a couple of centerpiece meals every November and December.

While cranberries have worked their way into everyday pastries, salads and entrees, much of the nation’s production is still destined for the juice sector, where studies highlighting the healthful benefits to be found in these tart little beauties have led to marriages of convenience with dozens of suitors – from apples to raspberries to grapes – all looking to add a pucker’s worth of disease-fighting power to their natural liquid arsenals. (Studies have found that cranberries contain not only antioxidants, which combat free floating radicals in the body, but also possess an inherent “anti-adhesion” property that can coat the bladder to help prevent kidney and urinary tract infections.)

Wisconsin leads the country in cranberry production, accounting for about half of the national output, followed by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington. But the past decade has seen a resurgence of the crop in Michigan as well, with a number of local growers coupling cranberry operations with their existing blueberry farms in an effort to capitalize on the shared attributes of the two diminutive berries and their similar need for sandy, acidic soils.

In South Haven, Bob DeGrandchamp’s decision to add cranberries as a complement to the main blueberry operations at his family’s DeGrandchamp’s Farm in 1994 hinged on simple economics. “We have a longer growing season now,” DeGrandchamp notes. “The soil and water situations are nearly identical to our blueberry operation, and the labor to harvest cranberries is significantly less.”

Of course, any meaningful examination of cranberries probably needs to dispel a commonly held myth. Despite the popular image of growers wading into waist-high bogs amid a blanket of buoyant red berries, flooding the beds is simply a harvesting method. “People see pictures of ripe cranberries floating in water, but they do not grow under water and the plants are actually easily injured by poor drainage,” explains Dr. Eric Hanson, professor of horticulture at Michigan State University and executive director of the Michigan Cranberry Council. “They are only flooded to remove the fruit and to protect the plants from severe winter cold.”

Michigan currently boasts only a handful of working cranberry outfits in clusters scattered among the rural northeast, the Upper Peninsula, and the southwestern corner of the state along Lake Michigan totaling about 250 acres – compared to more than 18,000 acres in Wisconsin. So although Michigan doesn’t figure to threaten the nation’s top-producing areas anytime soon, the state does possess the climatic conditions, suitable soils, and agricultural infrastructure needed to become a solid cranberry player for many years to come under the right circumstances, according to Hanson.

As is the case with almost every farming decision regardless of the underlying crop, the market will be the ultimate factor in attracting new cranberry growers. “Prices have been low enough in the past six to eight years to discourage expansion,” Hanson says, adding that the high cost of constructing and planting cranberry beds – as much as $50,000 per acre – can be a real impediment to smaller aspiring growers.

With that harvest generally occurring in October, there’s still time to get out and choose from the freshest cranberries available and to sample a comforting treat like the cranberry-almond cookie from DeGrandchamp’s, or to try your own hand at a cranberry recipe. The sweet/sour contrast of a simple cranberry dessert is a delicious encapsulation of our conflicting feelings toward this time of year, when the joy and warmth of the impending holiday season is tempered by our awareness of the bitter winter to follow.

And it’s a nice reminder that there’s more to the little cranberry than those bizarre jellied slices sweating on the Christmas table.