From Vine to Table, Learn How Cranberries Are Harvested at CranMac Farm in Washington

Long before heaps of sugar, orange peels and tart cranberries are boiled together to make sauce, CranMac Farm in Washington State has a hand in bringing that delicious recipe to your holiday table. Meet Malcolm and Ardell McPhail, first-generation farmers who operate a 100-acre cranberry farm on the sandy soil of the Long Beach Peninsula, who almost became dairy farmers. “We were both extension agents [at Washington State University] and Malcolm [said] he wanted to go into farming,” Ardell recalls with a smile. “He thought of a dairy farm, and I said, 'No way!’ Another extension agent we knew said, ‘The cranberries are good and they’re going to get better.' We got real interested.”

“We quit [our jobs] on the same day in 1985," Malcolm adds. "And it took four years to make sure that we were really able to work on the farm full-time without having jobs … In fact, Ardell went back to teaching. Every morning I would carry her books out to the car and say, ‘Go save the farm!’” Since then, the McPhails have grown their agriculture business into an operation that exports 12 to 14 percent of the state’s cranberry production, all while making time to volunteer with the Pacific Coast Cranberry Research Foundation — an organization they helped to create for the innovation and protection of the cranberry crop.

As long-time farmers in the Ocean Spray Collective, an agriculture cooperative, all the berries from CranMac Farm end up in Ocean Spray products. Every year, the McPhails grow, harvest and deliver more than 2 million pounds of cranberries to Ocean Spray, and the season offically kicks off when all cranberry parties collaborate. “Growers agree on a date for the receiving plant to open,” Ardell says. “And once they’re open, the harvesting season has officially begun."

Cranberries are perennials — surprise! — and can last decades upon decades if cared for properly. These high-maintenance vines only grow in five U.S. states known for sandy soil and coastal, windy weather: Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. And that means nearly all 600 acres of cranberries grown along Washington's Cranberry Coast are the exact same shrubby vines that are pruned, nurtured and harvested every season.