This is the fourth post in a series about the Get Close to Your Food Chef's Tour. See photos from Day One here, and a post on Oulton's Farms here.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Chef's Tour Day 2: Terra Beata Cranberry Farm
While visiting the Terra Beta Cranberry Farm, I formed a new found respect for this tart and festive berry. I have never been a big fan of cranberry sauce (my mother’s being the only one that I truly enjoyed). Or the juice for that matter, but I do like the OceanSpray commercial where the two guys are standing waist high in a flooded cranberry bog. I was hoping to visit during a harvest to see them flooded, but the timing wasn’t right.
At Terra Beata, the berries they grow are mostly used in processing and for a frozen product. Berries used in processing are harvested by flooding the bushes in the trenches and then using a weighted roller, they release the berries and they float to the surface where they can be collected. Then they are taken to the on-site washing and sorting line.
They also take in berries from other farms to be washed and sorted. The day we were there, Terra Beata was cleaning berries from two other farms, 4,000 lbs in the morning, then a complete cleaning of the facility before they do 3,000 lbs from another local organic farm. Wow, that’s a whole lot of red!
They had some tasty samples for us at the end of the tour…here is a quick and easy idea for a healthy and tasty Christmas treat.
Allow frozen local cranberries to thaw out for 5 min. Roll half of the still frozen, but moist berries, in icing sugar, and the other in a equal mix of icing sugar and ground cinnamon… enjoy!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments