Our next stop would be in the small village of Warrens Wisconsin - population 544. This place wasn’t originally a planned stop on our travels through the state until Chris discovered some information at the visitor center near the Apostle Islands a week ago. It turns out, the state of Wisconsin is the top producer of cranberries - not just of the United States but of the world! Somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the world’s cranberries come from the state and Warrens is near the center of the peak cranberry growing area. Every year on the last weekend of September, Warrens holds a Cranberry Festival. Now we only discovered this fact out a few days before the event was taking place. But as it turns out, we think this was actually fortunate for us. The festival may have been a fun thing to see, but it also means that we would be two of 150,000 visitors that converge on this small village. By coming in a few days after the event, we won’t have the to contend with the crowds. More importantly, we were able to reserve a campsite at the small county campground in town. With the event over, there was plenty of availability at McMullen Memorial Park.
We did have a slight issue trying to time our visit to Warrens. We have a reservation for a campground in Indiana less than 2 weeks out but it’s a 750 mile drive. We could be flexible with our schedule, but only to a small extent. We needed to be out of the fairgrounds campground in Chippewa Falls since they close for the season on September 30, but we really wanted to maximize our time in the stop after Warrens in Spring Green Wisconsin since we had come up with a long list of things to see and do in that area. We likely could have just spent 2 nights in the county park and saw some of the cranberry harvest taking place. That was something we had wanted to see when we were in Massachusetts a year ago but we were a couple weeks early to see them harvesting. But Chris had also stumbled upon another event that was to take place in Warrens on Saturday morning in Warrens that we just had to attend. One of the local cranberry farms opens up to visitors just one day a year to walk around the bogs and see the equipment up close and personal. The best part was the option for visitors to put on a pair of chest waders and walk in one of their flooded cranberry marshes! That sounded too good to pass up. Staying for the Saturday morning event would mean we would need to spend 4 nights in Warrens and only 3 nights in Spring Green. But we realized that check out time from the county park wasn’t until noon. We should have time to go to the morning event and still make it back in time to leave by check out time. The following picture proves we succeeded.
Knee Deep in Cranberries
It was just a 90 miles drive from Chippewa Falls to Warrens and since the bulk of it was on Interstate 94, it was a straight forward drive. McMullen Memorial County Park has about 80 sites and we had only reserved a spot about 4 days ahead of time since this stop was a bit impromptu. When we pulled in on Wednesday, it seemed like the camp host wasn’t expecting anybody to be coming in today. I suspect the campground was full during the festival and might have some weekend folks arriving later in the week. I don’t think he had checked his online reservation system so we needed to show him that indeed we had paid for a site. He pointed us in the proper direction and we drove over to the site. It is a fairly wooded campground and while our site was marked and we saw our electric pedestal, it wasn’t perfectly clear what orientation we were expected to park the rig. We surveyed the ground and picked which trees I could easily park in between and we got setup. They had already turn off water for the season and were in the process of closing down the bathroom and shower facilities. Good thing we came prepared and are only here for 3 nights.
Before I describe our visit, just a bit of a cranberry primer first. To give a sense of the size and scope of the cranberry business in and around Warrens, I have a snapshot from Google Earth that is roughly 7 miles wide by 4 miles tall. Each of the maroon rectangles is a cranberry field. There are also lots of ponds near these fields. That’s because growing and harvesting cranberries requires a large amount of water. Obviously the plants need water to grow and develop fruit during the summer months but they don’t actually grow in water. We’ve all seen the Ocean Spray commercials with guys in chest waders walking around a cranberry marsh and may have just assumed they are grown in flooded fields like rice. But during the spring, summer and early fall, cranberry fields look a lot like other farm crops. They will be irrigated if Mother Nature doesn’t provide enough rain but they aren’t in standing water.
Aerial View of Warrens with Rectangular Cranberry Marshes
Cranberries harvested for fresh fruit are picked by specialized machines from dry fields. But the majority of the crop is harvested for juice or sauce, and for this use, flooded harvesting is the most efficient method. Cranberries have small air pockets inside of them so they will float on water. The farmers have constructed their fields in these rectangles of roughly 1 to 4 acres with the field surrounded by berms or roads so they can be flooded easily for harvest in the fall. While cranberries are a big deal in some parts of the country, it pales in comparison to wheat, corn or soybeans for example. So John Deere doesn’t produce the equipment required to harvest cranberries. The local farmers are required to build what they need based on years of experience. Some of the equipment we will see while visiting has a bit of a Frankenstein feel to it with parts cobbled together from all sorts of other industries.
Chris had also discovered a map and description of the area’s cranberry farms on the village’s website. Besides providing a nice turn by turn set of instructions to get from one farm to another, it also explained some of the etiquette expected from visitors like us. While harvest season is a busy time for the farms, most of them are fine with visitors stopping along the road to watch if they are out actively working one of the fields. Just stay out of the way and leave room for the large vehicles to get in and out. They have a lot of long days to work when the berries are ripe and they don’t need extra distractions to interfere with their job. The next morning, we had perfect weather to go out and explore based on the map and directions provided.
We didn’t really have set plan other than to see if we could find any interesting activity taking place on any of the farms. We didn’t need to go very far before we stumbled onto some action. We had stopped to look for a geocache near one of the large ponds and saw that a quarter mile down the road were some workers and large equipment. We took the warning to stay out of the way and just walked down to see what was going on. Fortunately they were working on a marsh nearest the road so we didn’t need to walk onto the farm to get a good look. Turned out to be Russel Rezin and Son Cranberry Marsh.
Swans Bobbing for Breakfast
Cranberry Harvest Underway
This particular field is 2.5 acres and they were just finishing up the last 10 percent of the berries. We watched for 30 minutes or so just trying to understand what we were seeing. There was a crew of half a dozen people. They had a long yellow boom that had previously been placed around the perimeter of the marsh. It appeared to be some sort of flexible mesh or fabric that is a foot or so wide and hundreds of feet long. There is some sort of foam inside that permits the boom to float on the surface in a vertical orientation and contain the millions of cranberries that are floating in the marsh. Based on the people walking in the marsh with just hip waders on, it looks like the water is not quite knee deep. The boom is slowly pulled in to the corner of the field where the equipment is situated. This in turn draws the berries to the pump.
Closer View of Harvest
The pump is an unrecognizable thing. Based on its color, I might guess it started its life as a Ford tractor but off the backend is a large PTO driven pump with 8 inch tubing running from the surface of the water in the corner of this field. The guys in the marsh are raking the berries to the input tube. Another tube runs up above the pump and tractor into a scaffolding like structure where somehow the sucked up water, berries and debris is separated. The berries are directed out a chute into a full size semi trailer. The water and debris is sent into a waiting dump truck and the bulk of the water is filtered out of the bottom into an adjacent marsh.
Drawing in the Boom
Overseeing the Berry Separator
While we are standing there, another couple pull up and walk over to watch with us. They are visiting from out of state and while he is a farmer, this type of farming was all new to him. The one semi trailer was nearly full and a second one came up the road and pulled in behind the first. There looked to be a second boom all around the perimeter of the marsh and I suspect that it will be pulled in soon to get all of the cranberries that may have escaped over the boom in the first pass. Beyond the semis, I could see another tractor with some sort of large reel hanging off the back and a worker was starting to spool up some of the boom that has been pulled in. It will likely be taken to the next field to repeat the process. Even though none of the equipment was super high tech, it was still quite fascinating to watch.
Starting to Coil Up Boom for Next Field
It was a little before lunch and I talked Chris into a short detour just north of Warrens. I wanted to find an old geocache placed way back in 2001. There aren’t a lot of these real old caches and we were only about 15 miles away. It is placed in a rest stop along I-94 so my thinking was to take the short drive, use the rest area as our lunch stop and find the old cache and come back to Warrens to continue our cranberry journey. Like normal, nothing is quite as easy as it seems. The cache at the rest stop was well behind the parking area at an old scenic overlook that is no longer in use. I found the old stairs up to the viewpoint, found the cache and took a picture but it took longer than I anticipated. We also noticed there was another geocache in the drive that had a large number of favorite points so we “had” to stop there as well. This detour was successful but did take two and a half hours.
Found Abandoned Steps at Rest Stop
View from Overlook
When we got back into Warrens, we decided to to stop at Wetherby Cranberry Farms. This is where we will head to do the tour on Saturday morning. Since we know we will be tight for time to get back after the tour and pack up to continue driving south, we hope to see the farm store, pick up some berries and just ask about the way the tour works.
Wetherby Warehouse and Store
Our stop went even better than planned. The store was just about empty except for the one worker inside. They do have an assortment of cranberry products including some wine as well as pictures and information regarding the history of this particular farm. We get a few bags of their dried cranberries and as we check out and ask about the upcoming tour, the woman asks if we would like to have a tour of the inside cranberry processing equipment. She tells us that this building will be off limit to visitors on Saturday so other visitors won’t get a chance to see this side of the business. It turns out the woman is the owner of the farm and that it was her grandfather’s business.
Diorama of Wetherby Farm
Old Cranberry Mill from 1929 in Use Until 2007
She had a ton of stories about the family, history of this farm as well as a walk around some of the old and new processing and packaging equipment. It was kind of neat and gave us a much better sense for the business.
Optical Sorting Machine Circa 2023
Packaging Machine
It was mid afternoon by the time we headed out from the warehouse. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that we tried some of the dried cranberries and they were the best we have ever tasted. On the drive back, we saw some activity taking place along one of the side roads. From a distance, it didn’t look to be just another instance of what we had seen earlier this morning so we stop be to see what was going on. From the description in the self guided tour, we were looking at the Potter Cranberry Marsh. There are fields on both sides of the road. A couple of unusual tractors out in the field. We watched for 30 minutes.
Tractor Raking the Cranberry Field
Closer View of Tractor
The field they were working in had already been flooded but just with a few inches of water. Both of the tractors are actually on tracks (like a tank) instead of wheels. The front and back end of the tractors have hydraulic rakes that have maybe 30 long tines on both ends. With the rakes down, the tines are spring loaded so they vibrate as the tractor drives over the cranberry plants. This vibration is what knocks the ripe berries off the plant and they float to the surface.
A Section After Raking with Berries Floating
Tractor Turns Around for Another Pass
This particular field was much larger than the others we saw earlier today - closer to 18 acres. The information packet we had explained that there used to be 12 smaller fields and they have been converted to 2 larger fields. Some of the smaller fields on the other side of the road have already been raked and were ready for harvesting while other fields had yet to be worked so we could see the berries on the plants.
A Field Raked Earlier Across the Road
Closeup of Berries
Cranberry Bush Prior to Flooding and Raking
It’s probably a monotonous job to simply drive back and forth across the field. Since each field is down below the berm around it, the tractor does need to negotiate the slope into and out of the field being careful to raise and lower the rakes appropriately. I nearly flipped my tractor back in western New York years ago so when I see one on a steep grade, I get a nervous feeling. They don’t seem to have any issue and I’m sure the tracks are much needed to not slip on the field edges as well as not damage the actual plants they are driving over. Just uphill of the large fields is a 20 acre pond with a large diesel powered pump. I suspect the fields below are fed water through gates via gravity but the pump is needed to drain the fields after harvest to reclaim it for later. I definitely feel like we saw and learned a lot about the cranberry farming process today.
Large Pump at Upper Pond
We ended up not getting through much of the proposed tour loop that first day but the next morning we opted to go back to the same fields we had seen the tractors raking in the afternoon guessing that they might be back this morning. Sure enough as we drove up to Potter farm, the crew was working at collecting the cranberries. In fact they had already finished the smaller fields on the one side of the road and were maybe halfway done with the large 18 acre marsh.
They needed to use a different approach to running the boom out around the floating berries given the size of this field. Plus the vacuum equipment was located in the southwest corner of the marsh but a fairly strong breeze was blowing the berries to the northeast corner. They would need over 3500 feet of boom to go the full way around the perimeter so instead they have a small airboat at work. We arrived just as a pair of workers were setting up to pull the next section of boom off the large spool behind a tractor using the airboat.
Airboat Picks Up Boom
We watched as he headed through the berries to the far side of the water and attached one end of the boom to the shore while he pulled the boom out away from shore. The other worker came over with another tractor with an articulated hydraulic arm hanging off one side. She attached the boom to the end of the arm and positioned it right along the edge of the water. The arm has some sort of brushes that rotate and sweep the berries away from the grass and weeds at the waters edge.
Airboat Positions Boom
Tractor Pulls Opposite End of Boom
The tractor and boat worked in unison to pull the berries to the opposite corner where the vacuum equipment is. It was fascinating to watch. It was clear there was a lot of weight being pulled and they were working against the wind. The airboat sounded like it was at full throttle at times and barely moving. At one point the boat operator needed to get out of it to check on something and it seemed a bit surreal since it looks like he is on a real lake but as he steps off he is in water barely above his knees. They slowly make their way across with a fair amount of berries spilling over the top of the boom but these will be captured in the next pass or two.
Directing Berries to Vacuum Equipment
Since the berries are all different colors from yellow through deep maroon, the patterns formed in them was rather interesting to see. This last collection of berries was added to the outside of the ones already over by the vacuum. Four or five people were constantly raking the berries towards the inlet and another would slowly pull in the closest boom. From the looks of things, this pond was going to take a bit longer than we were willing to stand and watch. I suspect the reason they have converted the six smaller fields into this one larger field is the vacuum equipment can stay in the same spot. We never witnessed the effort required to move the equipment from one field to another but I think it might be a lengthy undertaking. Adding an airboat to the equipment list is a small price to pay to streamline the harvest process - plus it looks like fun.
Swirls of Colorful Cranberries
It was 11 AM and we realized we had reached our attention span for cranberry harvesting. Plus we knew we still had our tour tomorrow morning so we decided to go out and get in a bit of a hike. Mill Bluff State Park is about 20 miles southeast of Warrens. They have a few trails in the park and there is another old geocache from 2001 to find. We head down there to check it out. We had gotten annual state park passes for Michigan, Minnesota and North Dakota so far this summer but haven’t had the need to buy the one from Wisconsin. This state park does not have an office; at least one that is open this late in the season but they do have a QR code at the trailhead and after a bit of a struggle to get a day pass, we were on our way. Our first goal is Camel Bluff Loop - listed as an easy 1.3 mile loop.
Camel Bluff Trailhead
Given the name of the trail, we were expecting to some sort of rock formation along the way but we weren’t positive what or where it would be. The trail was sandy at times but still nice. We definitely had the place to ourselves.
Camel Bluff?
About 3/4 mile into the hike, we saw a spur trail that looked fairly substantial so we follow it to see where it leads. It only went a few hundred feet to a 20 foot tall stone pillar. It was rather unusual looking since there didn’t seem to be others like it in the area.
Stone Pillar
After the hike, we drive down to the small pond and beach area. There are picnic tables and it was a decent view. There were a handful of children playing in the water. We found a spot in the shade and ate lunch.
Mill Bluff SP Beach
Just across the street from the pond is a large bluff. It’s probably 1000 feet long and 500 feet wide and stands over 200 feet tall. The Mill Bluff Trail starts here and has two parts to it. One section of trail stays low and loops around the perimeter of the bluff. Another section of the trail leads up a steep stone staircase to the top of the bluff. We skip the perimeter walk since the bugs seemed to be active and we didn’t feel the need to get bitten. But we want to see the view from the top of the bluff so we headed up.
Up We Go
At the top of the stairs, a trail leads to the north and the south. We check out both views. There are several more bluffs to the south which are likely within the state park and are the reason for its name.
View of More Bluffs
We still needed to go find the old geocache which is a bit further north closer to where Interstate 90 crosses the park. The trail here was marked but much less maintained. Since we were on a specific mission, we toughed it out and walked through the brush and found it. There were a couple more caches back here but the trail wasn’t a lot of fun so we call it a day and head back to camp. We need to do some advance packing for our travel day tomorrow so we will be ready to pull out after returning from our cranberry tour.
Wetherby Cranberry Company has their tours running from 9 AM to noon on Saturday. We drive to the main store where we visited the other day and get our tickets. Twenty dollars for the combination of tour and the wading experience sounds like a bargain to us. They do offer some of the activities on Sunday as well but won’t have all the equipment running. We stand in line and wait for the school bus to arrive.
Boarding the Bus for Tour
When they have a bus full of visitors, we set off to where the actual event is being held further back on their property. The owner, the granddaughter of the founder of the farm who we met the other day, uses the time it takes to drive to give all of the farms history and how the business has evolved over the generations. Some fun facts: they typically yield around 250 barrels of cranberries per acre and each barrel weighs 100 pounds. That means the 18 acre field we watched being harvested yesterday produced over 400,000 pounds of berries which would explain the constant stream of semi trailers used to haul them away.
We arrive at the tour spot and they have a a couple dozen chairs and benches set up for us to take off our shoes and crawl into our chest waders. They have a few different sizes to accommodate most people. They had recently got a new inventory of them so we had clean ones which was even better. One of the other family members explains how to walk in a cranberry marsh without falling over. The layer of berries floating isn’t much of an issue but the cranberry plants themselves are somewhat vine-like and you need to consciously pick up your feet instead of just slowly shuffling them.
Wader Dressing Area
Heading In
The water was just a little more than knee deep and it seems like our waders were leak free which was a good thing. I did have the concern with the camera gear but I managed to stay upright as did all the others in this first group. It sounds like they will get one or two people falling during the course of the day. It was fun to reach in and grab a handful of berries and toss them in the air.
Having Fun
One thing we had heard about is that these cranberry marshes are full of spiders. The owner mentioned this as well but said that they are not a poisonous variety which was somewhat reassuring. I really wasn’t noticing them until I walked over to the boom that was surrounding this section of berries. I was amazed by how many spiders were crawling on the black fabric. And once I knew what is was looking for, I stared to see them on the berries as well. I’ve included a closeup picture of the boom. It’s probably less than a foot wide in real life. I tried to count spiders in the picture and got tired when I reached 200!
Boom Contains Berries
Hundreds of Spiders
When we saw another bus arrive with the next group, we headed out to find our shoes and return the waders. That was an incredibly fun thing to try and we were so happy that we had adjusted our travel plans to be able to work it in. Near the wading area is another piece of equipment that was only on display. It is a mechanical rake that is used to harvest dry fields of berries for fresh fruit. Only 5% of berries are harvested for this market so we weren’t likely to stumble upon one of these in action as we toured the area. As we walk to the other side of the marsh where the harvesting equipment was setup, the next group of visitors had suited up and were starting to experience cranberry bog wading.
Mechanical Raking Machine
Next Batch of Waders
The equipment setup was in the adjacent field on the opposite corner. Some of it was similar to what we saw at the other two farms earlier this week. On the near side was a 10 wheel dump truck that was being filled up with the leaf and twig debris that gets vacuumed up with the berries. On the far side is an 18 wheel semi with a large open top trailer where the berries are being deposited.
Berry Harvesting Equipment
The actual pump was very different looking from the other we saw. This one was built on an old school bus chassis although I may not have realized this had the owner not mentioned this fact during our ride over. Only a small portion of the telltale yellow paint was visible around the firewall area. On top of the bus chassis was an elaborate platform with a pump and the berry washing area. Conveyors off each end directed the debris and berries into the awaiting trucks.
School Bus Turned Cranberry Harvester
The input end of the pump was positioned on the surface of the water. The main difference here was the fact that there were no people in the marsh raking the berries to the inlet. Instead they were using a couple of pumps on the edge of the marsh spraying water into the center of the berries and directing them towards the main inlet. I suspect that this setup was their way of having a stream of berries constantly sucked in so the rest of the equipment can function like normal. I occasionally saw them pull in the boom as required. Had workers been moving the berries like normal, they would have cleared out this marsh too quickly and the equipment would just sit idle.
Water Jets Push Berries Towards Inlet
Visitors were permitted to climb up the ladder to the top of the platform and get a closer look. I patiently waited my turn and went up to marvel at how it works. The pump drops everything it vacuumed up onto a 4 by 6 foot surface that directs the berries through a series of high pressure water jets. Below the jets is some sort of lattice like tubing. The gap between the tubes is wide enough to permit small twigs and leaves to be forced through it while too narrow to permit the berries from passing through. The berries bounce down from the jet area onto a conveyor belt and are moved to the trailer. It was quite fascinating. At least one of the family members has an inventive side to be able to create such a device. I’m curious if it is constantly being tweaked to improve its performance or maybe it has been honed to perfection and only needs periodic maintenance?
Berries Enter Upper Platform
Water Jets Separate Debris and Berries
Well this was quite a bit of fun and way more interesting to see up close instead of a couple hundred feet away like we saw previously in the other fields of Warrens. I have edited together a video highlighting some of the things we saw in Warrens the past few days including how the berries are handled in the pump.
Link to YouTube Video
We worked our way back over to catch the next bus to take us to the main warehouse and packaging area. There were a lot of people milling around and there were many items for sale. I’m glad we picked up what we wanted earlier so we didn’t need to wait in line. We took the short drive to camp and finished packing to head to our next and last stop in Wisconsin - Spring Green.
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