Cranberry Harvest

In the fall of 1955, I was working on the home farm waiting to go on active duty in the army. By the first of October we were mostly caught up with the farm work. The corn had been harvested. The silo was filled, and we had finished the first round of making wood for our every hungry wood stoves.

Our neighbor friends, Jim and Dave Kolka suggested we could earn a few dollars working in the cranberry bogs located near Wisconsin Rapids. They knew a bog owner who paid $1.25 an hour, a quarter more than the standard $1.00 offered for laborers in those days. So my brother, Donald and I joined our friends in applying for this new job.

I had never paid much attention to cranberry growing and knew nothing about harvesting them. I would soon learn. The bog where we worked was one of the few left where the cranberries were raked by hand, using a rake similar to the one pictured above. I also learned that I needed to have a pair of hip boots, as we would be working in water.

Ranking cranberries by hand proved to be one of the most difficult jobs I’d ever had. By this time I’d worked in a pea cannery, in a pickle factory, and of course, did farm work of every stripe. On a scale of 1-10 for hard work, raking cranberries was 11. But the money was good and by late October, with frosty mornings and cold, cold water to wade in all day, we finished the job. Army basic training was nothing compared to raking cranberries.


THE OLD TIMER SAYS: A little hard physical work never hurt anyone.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

-October 6, 10-2:00 pm, Dregne’s, Westby. Book Signing with daughter, Sue.

--October 7, 1-4 pm, August Derleth Center, 300 Water Street, Sauk City, Guest Speaker.

--October 13, Wisconsin Book Festival, 3:00 pm. Wis Historical Society Museum on the Square.

--October 20, 6-8:00 pm. American Legion Post 306, 518 Water Street, Green Lake. Fund Raiser for Princeton Public Library. Phone 920-295-6777 for ticket information.

--October 21, 1:00 pm. Readers Realm Bookstore, Montello.


Purchase Jerry’s signed DVDs and books from the Library in Wild Rose, Wisconsin (a fundraiser for them):
Patterson Memorial Library
500 Division Street
Wild Rose, WI 54984
barnard@wildroselibrary.org
www.wildroselibrary.org
Phone: 920-622-3835
DVDs: His latest Public TV show, One-Room Country School is now available. It’s based on his book, One-Room Country Schools (also available). Emmy Winner, A Farm Winter with Jerry Apps (based on The Quiet Season book.)
Jerry Apps a Farm Story (based on Rural Wit and Wisdom and Old Farm books.)
The Land with Jerry Apps, (based on the book Whispers and Shadows,)
Never Curse the Rain, (based on his book with the same title)
The library has several of Jerry’s signed books for sale including Jerry’s newest nonfiction books, Once a Professor, Every Farm Tells a Story, Living a County Year (reprints), One-Room Country Schools, Never Curse the Rain and Old Farm Country Cookbook, and his novel, The Great Sand Fracas of Ames County. Also Wisconsin Agriculture: A History, Roshara Journal (with photos by Steve Apps) and Telling Your Story—a guidebook for those who want to write their own stories.
Contact the library for prices and special package deals.