October 19, 2002 - Lake Retreat 2

NOTE:  THERE ARE MANY PICTURES -- YOU MAY NEED TO RELOAD OR REFRESH SEVERAL TIMES.  SORRY!

We're back at Lake Retreat where Dave will play at being a mechanic and Barb will probably be painting again for a week.  Then a week "off" followed by a couple of months at Warm Beach (Stanwood, WA) Conference Center helping them get ready for the Christmas light show and doing general maintenance.

Taking a look into ancient history (at least it seems like a long time ago), you can see a sand castle that someone even put palm trees into.  This is still in Newport, OR, and the flotsam that some people pick up and hang for display is always fun to look at.

On the left, a friendly native (who was carefully watching another of its kind in the yard) who enjoyed getting its ears scratched after posing for the portrait.  The 10 armed starfish was in a display at the Research Center the U of O has.  Interesting displays including a huge octopus (two fewer arms than this guy) that had just eaten a crab and was torpid (lethargic) as all get out while the crab got digested.

Naturally, we had to go to Agate Beach to find agates.  Which we did, too!  And I just realized we didn't take a picture of our prize.  I'll get one later today and include it.  The birds looking North toward the fog, and

then some more birds looking toward the South.  The fog never did really catch up with us.  And there's Barb muttering something about "...finding stuff when the sun shines."  She's cleaning, naturally.  Yes, the life of a fulltimer isn't ALL fun and games.  We've just landed in Chinook, WA, where tomorrow we'll meet up with Ray and Kay (who actually intercepted the voice mail I left them and came to visit us on their way to their space) and go harvest cranberries for a few days.  Should be fun.

And fun it was.  And HARD work, too.  On the left, the berries have been flooded, beat off the vines (mechanical process), corralled, and are being "herded" toward the elevator.  I think that's me on the left and Salvador (the hired hand) in the middle.  We're in the process of dragging the berries from where Ray is taking out corral boards, making the surface area for the berries smaller, toward the elevator.  On the right is what a cranberry bog (or marsh or field) looks like before it's flooded.

There's Ray taking out a corral board, and Kay pulling the berries away from the boards, making it easier to move them.  The boards (you'll see better pictures later) are connected with what looks sort of like a hinge pin arrangement, and are about 8' long.  On the right is Jerry, a friend of Ray & Kay's who came to see what was happening, and driving the tractor with the trash boards (explanation later) is Audrey.  The bog belongs to Allen and Audrey, who are the parents of Ray and Kay's daughter-in-law.  That animal in the lower left of the tractor picture is a small Scotty-type dog named Ollie which Audrey was babysitting.  Later in the day, Ollie stood on the road next to the bog, looked at the corralled, floating berries thinking it was a solid surface, and jumped on (or in as was the case)!  Completely disappeared from sight and popped right back up for air, a bit astonished at the turn of events.  A good heave from Audrey brought him up and out of the water.  We were all doubled over laughing!  Almost instantly after being rescued, he sought out the biggest pile of dirt he could find and totally rolled around in it until he was covered.  What a mess.  Good thing it was headed to the groomer later in the day!

Couple of different views of the process.  The water (right front) is continually pumped into the bog while we're harvesting because if the vines or weeds poke above the surface, the boards drag on them and scrape the berries off and we have to go chasing them!  That machine looking skyward is the elevator.  You'll see more of it later.

Ah, leave it to Barb to find "flowers"; believe these are Asters, and considered weeds in and around the bog!  Here comes the trailer with the totes that will haul the berries to the Ocean Spray co-op receiving facility where they'll be rewashed, weighed, graded, etc.  There will be deductions for any trash over a certain percentage, so we're pretty careful about not putting more leaves and weeds up the elevator than necessary.  Incidentally, literature obtained at the "Chamber" indicates that the first cranberry vines to inhabit the area came from Massachusetts in the l890's which is the reason this peninsula has been called the Cape Cod of the West.  There are only about 550 acres of cranberries grown in bogs in this Peninsula area which is about half the total amount grown in Washington.  Most of Washington's cranberries are grown on small family farms averaging 11 acres which have been passed down for generations--like the Johnson Farm we worked in.

Ray and Kay in the background, Sal and I putting the trash boards in place.  This is the first time these particular boards were being used.  The trash will fall out of the elevator/conveyor as the berries are moved up because there are skinny little strips of aluminum that will let the leaves fall (wash) out but keep the berries going up.  Each field (pen, marsh, bog) is about an acre in size, in this case actually ranging from about 2/3 to 1¼ acres for a total of seven.  If the water holds, we'll be doing one field a day.

The water is carried/drained from one field to the next through a series of ditches, culverts, and ponds.  There is a constant concern about stepping in a ditch located on the sides of the pens because the water in those areas makes the thigh-high waders useless!  As ably demonstrated by Ray--on the first day of harvest!  He got wet up to his armpits; although the ditch is only about three feet deep, it's narrow and usually the person stepping in it will fall down.  We teased him about harvesting the berries the hard way, as these are what he emptied out of his boot!  And that was just the first boot!  Turned out that he was the victim the first day, and then the last day, wife Kay, as she was going back into the field to pull some stakes, managed to step off the ramp--placed across the ditch to avoid falling in--a little early and landed in the ditch herself!  Ray & Kay--the soggy cranberry bog bookends!  We loved working with them, as they not only have a good work ethic, they have a great sense of humor!  Barb & I also stumbled a few times, but managed to get only slightly wet--it's just part of the learning process in this activity, or the price of not paying attention to where you are and where you're going..

After lunch that first day, it was back to loading.  A friend of Allen and Audrey, Dave, came by to help, and while he has a beard, his hair is a tad longer than mine.  At the bottom of the elevator with chest waders on is Jim, Allen's cousin.  Ray and I are in the berries too, pushing them to Jim who is pushing them into the elevator while Dave and Audrey are leveling them in the totes.  Sal is down next to the elevator, pulling the trash out of the water that the boards have trapped, and is piling it up on the bank.  They get as much of the dead material out of the fields as they can to prevent disease and bugs from getting to the vines.  The water is anywhere from knee deep to mid-thigh deep, and the waders work just fine as long as you don't trip or fall in the ditch.  It's tough to walk around because of the tangle of vines, and it's not real easy to push the berries with the paddles, which are about 2-3' wide by 4-6" high.  They vary in size, and Barb was usually appropriately looking for the smaller ones, and I would try for a medium size.  Let the young ones use the big ones!  Pulling the drag (a combination of 3 boards that were larger than corral boards) was tough, but actually shoveling the trash was probably the most physically demanding of any job in the field.

Here's a better shot of a paddle held by Ray.  Jim in the waders, Audrey on the truck leveling the totes, and Barb getting some good shots of more flowers (some of the weeds/trash caught in the berries).  That board is a 2X6.  Pretty good sized berries in this field.  These were Stevens; we also harvested some Pilgrims.  There are several varieties of berries (yet another thing we didn't know about cranberries) and like most farmers, Allen and Audrey have their favorites.

Jim and Ray pushing/pulling the berries into the activated elevator.  The elevator is a series of paddles on chains that scrapes the berries out of the water, past the trash filter that is 3'x3', and then up the ramp to the end where they fall off into the totes.  There is a healthy single-cylinder engine running a hydraulic pump with controls for on/off, speed, and elevator angle located at the bottom for quick access by the pusher person who coordinates the effort with the berry leveler/monitor up in the totes regarding the positioning, speed, and angle of the elevator. 

And then once loaded, the totes are hauled a mile or so to the co-op where the delivery is recorded, the bins are unloaded, moved inside the receiving facility for further processing, and empty bins are loaded onto the trailer.

And that's part of the first day.  Ray showing off the Ocean Spray juice that was supplied by Allen and Audrey, Allen behind him, and me putting my shirt back on.  "Family Owned Since 1915" the sign proudly says and, believe it or not, at least one of those bogs we harvested  contains the same cranberry vines that were there in 1915!  Still producing.  Amazing!  While we were loading the berries, Allen was busy making sure the next field was ready to flood.  Hauling pipe, starting pumps, getting the corral boards set up, and things like that.

The elevator has been hauled back to the barn where it's checked over for any damage, washed, and made ready for the next day.  We're getting a ride back out to the fields where we'll pick up the corralling boards, take them to the next field, and set them up for the next day's harvest.  This field is being drained into the next field, and the pumps are turned on as well.

That's me and Sal carrying boards to the trailer in the background  and the pipe that carries water from one field to the next.  And there's a good shot of one of those ditches you don't want to step into once the field is flooded and they disappear from view!

Isn't this a beautiful place to work!  The field in the background is the one we finished harvesting, and the one in the foreground is the one we'll do tomorrow.  Then we're finishing pulling the boards from the harvested field, and you can see the vines poking up through the lowering water.

Kay and Jim loading boards on the tractor from the trailer because there isn't room on the dike for the truck and trailer.  Allen is in the field being flooded, connecting the boards and Ray, Kay, and I are lowering them while Jim is driving the tractor.  And my back is killing me!  And my legs, and arms, and shoulders, and neck!  AARRGH!  Agony that first night!  Too bad there wasn't anybody around I could complain to.  Everybody else was hurting just as much!  Lots of ibuprofen being passed around. 

Various stages of flooding here.  The berries are still on the vines.  The vines probably average about a foot in height.

Twin Jeeps!  Well, almost.  Ours (the one on the left) is older by a couple of years, but it was because of Ray & Kay's enthusiasm for theirs that we got ours.  That red truck has six totes in it like the trailer, and when the trailer is away unloading at the co-op, we're loading the truck, etc. (truck and trailer are rotated to prevent work stoppage).  And there we are catching a ride back to the barn after getting the corral boards down.

Jim consented to show us how the harvest was made in the old days, and Kay was anxious to get some for cooking.  That woman knows more ways to use cranberries in the kitchen than Betty Crocker herself!  That box Jim is using has a screen top and long tines on the bottom with the end open.  He pushes it through the vines and pulls the berries off with the tines.  Made us glad that "dry" harvesting was a thing of the past.   Ray and Allen watching and offering "advice" to Jim....who has done this before, of course.  For a 75 yr. old cancer survivor, he was working just as hard as any of us all day long.  He comes up from CA every year to help with the harvest and visit friends.  Really neat guy.  The whole crew was fun to work with.  Nobody complained (seriously, at least) about anything; well, maybe except for Barb at one point, who became frustrated that the wind was blowing the berries back to where she had just pulled them from and she temporarily refused to pull any more because of the futility of it (this was soon resolved, though, as the berries got corralled and pulled in despite the wind direction); the jobs rotated around the first few days until we each sort of fell into what seemed appropriate to do at the time.

The "beaters."  These machines (original modified by Allen, subsequently copied by other farmers, and shared with others) will knock the berries off the vines.  They, like the elevator, are all hydraulic.  The two drive wheels are also the steering wheels, operated by two levers.  Another lever will start the beaters spinning in either direction, and a 4th lever will raise and lower the beater.

The beaters at work.  Allen driving the lead, with Salvador following.  It's pretty easy to see where they've been and not been by the floating berries.  Turned out the water wasn't really deep enough for efficient "beating," so, after making one round, they gave it up for the day.

And the next day, the water still wasn't quite ready.  Seems that a leak had developed sometime during the night, and more filling was needed.  The women decided to go to another field and pick berries the old fashioned way.  By hand.  At least doing it that way eliminates the need to clean the trash out!  Pretty slow going though.  That's Audrey and Kay doing the picking.  Barb was in there too, but her picture didn't come out.

The holding ponds are filled by rainwater, but it has not been a very wet summer so the water is down quite a bit.  That dredge (again, designed and built by Allen) will pump the water and send it down this pipe to the field where it's needed.  And on the right is Ollie with his new hairdo;  he managed to stay out of the water today!

Lunch time!  Today we had a couple of extra helpers.  Allen and Chris are "Coasties"--Coast Guard--and were a major help.  Both young and in great shape and part of the coastal rescue squad.  Allen jumps out of helicopters on the rescue team, and Chris is assigned to one of those boats that can roll in the surf.  Neither job sounds like fun to this old guy, but I'm everlastingly grateful there are guys like this who are willing to do this kind of work.  While we didn't come here with the sign that says, "Will Work For Food," that's exactly what it turned out to be.  We were feted with lunch and dinner each of the days we worked.  Thank you Audrey!

Now, here's where the work starts.  The corral boards are pushed toward the center, and as the ring gets smaller, boards are removed and left floating to be pushed to the side later.  When there are weeds above the surface, the berries have to be paddled through them, as they'll get scraped off under the corral boards otherwise.  Barb is a good paddler, but don't tell her I said so.  She hates to let even one berry escape the elevator.  This field was the toughest of the seven because of the level of the water and the tall weeds.  Lots of grunting and puffing on my part.

Oops!  Like I was saying, the water is low this year.  The dredge got hung up on the only high spot in the pond.  Still pumping water, but sure did look awkward.

Barb's finding beauty with weeds, and Ray and I are happy we finally got these rascals corralled.  If you squint a bit you can see a bunch of escapees (and I don't mean members of the RV club) behind me.  Later, we rounded them up with a drag.

We never did get tired of enjoying the wonderful patterns made by the berries as they were rounded up.  Chris and Allen pausing with a sprinkler head in the picture as well, and Kay standing by another sprinkler with the drag in front of her.  The open water behind the drag is a clear indicator of its usefulness.  It hauls a bunch of berries, and can get real heavy.  Take my word for it.  And those sprinklers pose special challenges.  As the corral boards get to them, the berries have to be pushed away so the boards can be lifted over or slid around the sprinkler.  As the concentration of berries gets greater, it's harder to keep the berries from escaping.  We'd usually try to break a board out of the circle, scraping the berries with the end as we disconnected and reconnected.  You can see some loose boards floating behind Chris and Allen, and also the weeds Barb (and everybody else) worked to get the berries out of.

Some close-ups of the elevator operation.  Sal is scooping (with a manure fork) the leaves and trash onto the bank, and Jim is leveling the berries as they come off the elevator into the totes.  That blue strip is a cloth that keeps the berries from getting caught between the totes as they're loaded.  There are six totes on each load.  In an e-mail I just got from Audrey (Thanks!), she told us we managed to get 951.08 barrels of berries.  Their record is 1004.28, so it was a respectable harvest.  A barrel is equal to 100 pounds, so that means that we paddled 95,108 pounds of berries from about seven acres of land in seven days--the fastest harvest they'd ever experienced!

The elevator's trailer hitch used to move it around, Jim with his ever-present grin, and Daisy who never lets Jim out of her sight.  Except when a neighbor's golden retriever came to visit and Daisy chased it into the berries that were being harvested!  We laughed until our sides hurt.  But that wasn't the only funny dog story.  That little furry dog, Ollie, we talked about earlier?  Well, he took after Salvador's three-month old black lab (named Popcorn) with such a vengeance that Popcorn tripped all over himself trying to get away and fell into a ditch and scrambled into a culvert where it cowered from that little piece of fluff giving him fits.  The women finally caught and restrained Ollie, and Popcorn came out of the other end of the culvert with a little help from his owner.  No farm is complete without a few  of  "man's best friend"  around.

No sophisticated design is perfect.  This elevator worked almost flawlessly, but can you see that hammered out coffee can bolted to that cross member over the engine?  That keeps the water from shorting out the sparkplug and stalling the engine!  Simple fixes are often the best ones, and the water shield worked great.  Sal is still pitching the trash, and Barb caught a bunch of corralled berries with their own pattern.  The berries are probably stacked about 6-10" thick in this picture.

Chris and Kay pushing the drag toward the elevator, friend Dave up there pitching trash, Ray running the elevator just before he relinquished the job to me as his back was really hurting with the twisting-pulling action required in that position, and Barb found a leaf in the berries.  Strange as it seems, we liked the feel of the stacked berries against our legs as they piled up and as we walked through them; it was also a feeling of accomplishment since that feeling related to the near completion of another pen.  We also appreciated working in such a vibrant color--was kind of a "upper" if you know what I mean.  

Washing the elevator at the end of day 2, and me heading to haul trash on the beginning of day 3 while we wait for the water to come up.

Ray and I having a different kind of fun as we try to catch up on the cleaning chores.  Never did get it all cleaned up before we added more trash to the bank someplace else.  Tough life, eh?  Behind us in the picture on the right is the old pump house that Ray and some other guys moved last year by hooking trucks and Ray's Jeep to it.  Ray and Kay have been here at the harvest on five occasions, and we could see why.  Family connection notwithstanding, it's just kinda fun!

The compost pile behind the burn pile at the edge of the woods, and Salvador with a spider piñata he and his talented wife made.  They make and sell these in addition to a few other things; his wife Fabiola apparently is also an excellent cook and they may look into establishing a small fast-food (Mexican of course) service nearby.  They have two adorable boys, Allen  and Jonathan, as well as the dog Popcorn.  They had to leave before we were finished, and we sure missed them.  Both boys are U.S. citizens, and Salvador said he was picking up an application to become a citizen as well.  Our country will be blessed by people like this family, and we hope it works well for them.

The fourth day was a short one, as there was plenty of water and the "team" had settled into their jobs and our efficiency went up.  After lunch we were done so we played tourist in Long Beach which is, as the sign states, the world's longest beach.  I liked the shape of this chimney vent.  It had been cut and painted in the shape of the ubiquitous seagull.  Oh, in case anyone asks, there's one place you must get to for ice cream--the "Gas n' Grub."  They don't give skimpy portions for sure, and two definite flavors to try are called "Moose Tracks" and "Mt. St. Helen's Mud Pie."  Also, try breakfast at Lauri's Homestead Breakfast; we suggest you order just one item and ask for two plates.

Sure enough, the artist got it right, and we know first hand how it is to stand there like that!  There were several pavers like this on the walk out to the beach from the town.  Barb had read someplace that this weekend was a kite festival along with the cranberry festival, but these were the only kites we saw in the air.

This mural was depicting the harvest using equipment from the early 1900's, and then there's a store in downtown Long Beach called Stormin' Norman's.  We liked the up front statements they had in these days of so-called political correctness.  "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life" and "One Nation under God, May we never forget" and "God is good, all the time."  Place seemed to be doing a good business as well.

Not sure where we were going, but at this time of day, we were finished harvesting so we must be heading out to pull the boards and put them in the next field.  And these two little guys gave Sal fits one early morning before daylight.  He thought they were real and  tried to shoo them out the door!  At least he was man enough to admit it to Allen, so everyone gets a good laugh from the story.  Of course, they're for knocking the mud off the soles of our boots.

Yup, we're loading the trailer.  You can see the pile of trash on the bank.  When I wasn't running the elevator I was pitching trash.  Good workout every day.  Didn't need to take our customary morning walk this week, nosiree!  And there's the neighbors dog.  It was always on the search for something moving in the water, probably looking for frogs which it eats!  Yuk!

The plug has been pulled and the field is draining into the next one (or back into the pond, depending on which plug and field this is), and there are a few of the berries that escaped, about to get sucked into the next field!  We must be North of the equator, as the swirl is going clockwise, right?  I wonder if that's true.  Doubt it.

OK, here's the deal.  We're up there unloading the trailer, putting the boards into the next field.  Kay is putting fiberglass stakes up against the boards to keep them next to the bank so they won't get in the way of the beaters.  The field in the foreground is emptying into the field behind it, and that white pipe sticking up and making a 90 degree angle is where the water from the pond will be pumped through.  And on the right you can see Kay sticking the stakes in the ground and the elevator in the background waiting for us.

Working with people who continually grinned like this, beauty even in the weeds, and Dave's rottweilers goofing off in the pond...... what more could you ask for?  Kay is putting stakes in the ground to keep the boards away from the beaters, and Salvador is riding the trailer on his way to pick more boards from the old field and put them into the new field.

One of the big thrills for me, of course, was all the different machines that are used on a cranberry farm.  Here Ray is showing Barb (who took most these pictures) how this particular spreader works.  The bins are loaded with whatever chemical is being used, each is individually metered, the whole business is hydraulic and the drive wheels are the steering wheels, just like the beaters.  Allen is an amazing engineer.  In the picture on the left, you can see the gas tank behind the seat (this has three wheels, as you can see, the single wheel is the rear wheel).  All the machines that go into the fields have these portable tanks.  That way, if more gas is needed while in the field the tank can be removed from the field, refilled and carried back to the machine.  That way there's a limited chance of pollution in the field.

TO BE CONTINUED:

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