Spring is on the way!

We do many things in the off season. One of the cultural practices in cranberry farming is sanding. We flood the fields in early winter to make a layer of ice. This allows us to do work like ditching and sanding. We place a layer of sand on the ice in the late winter and as the ice melts it filters to the bog floor. The sand covers up weed seeds and insect eggs and perhaps most importantly allows the longer runners to set a root, thus invigorating the plant.

Above is a picture of one of the ways we sand. When the ice it thin, we tow the small sander behind the tractor and lay down the sand. We can sand about 2 acres per day with this method. With thick ice, we use tandem trucks and and a bigger tow behind sander. With this method, we can sand up to 8 acres.