GUILFORD – Keith Bishop shoveled up a big scoop of fresh cranberries in one of the cavernous “cooler” rooms below Bishop’s Orchard’s Farm Market, from the remainder of his 20,000-pound harvest.
These tart ruby-red berries that came from the Killingworth cranberry bog may likely sit alongside the gravy at someone’s Thanksgiving table in a homemade cranberry sauce or end up in the turkey stuffing.
“I've got a wholesaler in Hartford that is taking 30 cases today,” Bishop said three days before Thanksgiving, surveying the berries, representing 20 percent of the October harvest sitting in over-sized stacked crates.
Bishop said he has enough to last through Christmas though, noting the dry weather this summer led to a lower crop yield.
The perennial berries were harvested from a 2.5-acre bog in Killingworth, Killingworth Cranberries LLC, the last commercial cranberry bog in the state.
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Bishop bought the cranberry farm in 2012 from the Evarts family, started by Cyrus Evarts in 1896 on Pond Meadow Road that had been in the family for generations.
Many think of Cape Cod when they think of cranberries, especially since Massachusetts is the second largest producer in the country with more than 14,000 acres, according to the UMass Cranberry Station. But cranberry bogs once thrived in Connecticut’s Tolland County in the late 19th century when there were as many as 35 bogs.
The Tolland Historical Society recently led a tour of 13 old bogs, which included three former commercial farms and many backyard bogs.
Larger scale commercial farms included Maxwell’s, Kelly’s and Reed’s, with the last one in operation until 1907, according to Richard Symonds, Jr., of the historical society.
And while 35 bogs may seem like a large number, the historical society notes that Wisconsin is the number one producer of cranberries with 250 farms, producing 500 million pounds.
Symonds, who’s made a study of old mills writing several books, would often come across bogs on his travels, sometimes spotting a wild cranberry plant growing near a dam.
“And if you're in there at the right time of year, you see the red berries or the red plants,” Symonds said. “And you can tell from color, you can tell from the density of the plants. You can tell from the ditching, the water channels that may or may not be there.”
In Killingworth, the gem-colored berries, named Scarlet Knight, are a special hybrid developed by a Rutgers University breeding program, according to Bishop.
Killingworth Cranberries also sells the berries to other farm markets in the state and can be found at Killingworth’s True Value Hardware and Stew Leonard’s in Newington. Using Bishop’s Orchards own recipes, the rest are turned into cranberry condiments sold at the market on Boston Post Road.
Bishop said he bought the farm as a personal project to have “a new challenge for my retirement years.”
Another reason, Bishop said, is his “dedication to agriculture” and desire to keep a long, generational “unique farm operation going.” He said they also wanted another signature crop “tied in with our family operation.”
Bishop joked that Kenneth Evarts, Cyrus’s grandson, who wanted to retire from farming, “enticed me to bite on his hook to buy the bog from him.”
It also made sense from a business perspective as Bishop’s farm market had been the Evart’s main customer since the 1970s. Often the Bishop’s staff and family would help weed and care for the bog.
More than 100 years after Cyrus Evarts sold his first cranberries in 1911, it was a long road to turn the overgrown bog into a more productive cranberry farm.
And there’s more to cranberries than sauce or relish — there's science. Bishop reached out to Cornell University’s College of Agriculture, his alma mater, to find experts in the field.
He and his father Al and son Ryan also contacted the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers and growers in New Jersey, another major cranberry producer, to study commercial cranberry production and growing techniques.
These experts helped Bishop evaluate soils, growing conditions, water management and renovation requirements. The Killingworth Inland Wetlands and Watercourses Commission approved the agriculture plan in 2012, Bishop said.
After spending some $250,000 on the farm and bog, Bishop planted the first crop of Scarlet Knight in 2016 and didn’t see the first yield until 2019. Cranberries take about four years to come to full maturation.
The newly engineered and renovated bog uses advanced farming technology, as economics allow, he said.
Bishop installed a new drainage system and a quarter-acre irrigation pond. He also built interior ditches, dikes, water control structures and a remote-controlled pop-up irrigation system.
Importantly, he added a new sand base for the cranberry plants to grow and thrive. Native cranberry plants love clay soil with layers of sand.
Even with the new technology, weather conditions and pests have affected the crops. This year because of the dry weather in August, plus wet weather the year before, the yield was smaller with 60 percent of the crop harvested, he said.
One year an insect new to Bishop, emerged and devastated the crop.
“It was called a fireworm because it goes through so fast, you hardly even know it's there and then it's gone,” he recalled. “So, I had no crop at all in 2022.”
Bishop has since taken care of the problem using limited pesticides only on a “critical” spot-basis on the top part of the plant, which leave no residual on the berries, he said. He stressed he uses the same pesticides that are standard among cranberry growers across the country. He also uses pheromone sticky traps for the pests.
“So, I've got to step up and I've got to be vigilant to then be scouting,” he said about the bugs.
If all goes well for the crop, then Bishop enlists his wife, Debbie and some friends in early fall to do a dry harvest. Bishop only floods the bogs to overwinter them as the layer of ice on top insulates the plants.
At the “fall cranberry harvest ritual” Bishop can be seen using a “harvester” that looks like a fancy lawn mower.
The volunteer workers feed the plants into a separator machine that separates the berries from the chaff.
And, the Bishop family dog, Nettie, even joins in the family effort.
“The dog’s around to help out,” Bishop said with a light chuckle. Nettie likes to play in the chaff “and she just likes to snuggle up there.”
For Bishop the cranberry farm is a labor of love.
"That’s part of farming, being able to be a steward of God’s country and enjoy the peace when working solo," he said. "And to bring in the fruits of my labor and have people enjoy them and share my story."
Nov 27, 2024
Editor, ShoreLine Times
Susan Braden is the editor of the ShoreLine Times and a frequent contributing staff writer to the New Haven Register. She has been with Hearst Connecticut Media Group since 2016. When not working she devours cozy mysteries and loves scary movies and Scandinavian noir.