Drought conditions causing costly issues for New Jersey cranberry farm
CHATSWORTH, N.J. - In part of the New Jersey Pine Barrens is Lee Brothers Incorporated, a family business that specializes in cranberries.
"We grow cranberries. Right now we are harvesting. Harvest season goes from usually the month of October," said Andrew Lee, the Agricultural Operations Lead.
A process that after months of letting the cranberries grow in a bog, consists of flooding them, then taking a mechanical picker to separate the cranberries from the vines and then they rise to the top.
The cranberries then get loaded on a truck and head to the Ocean Spray facility down the road.
"It is crazy and it’s really cool too to go to the grocery store and see, you can kind of think, oh I had some kind of part in there," said Andrew.
The key to getting the cranberries to the shelves all starts with water, which the drought conditions in New Jersey have been tough.
"I’ve been here for 25 years and I’ve never seen it this bad," said Stephen Lee IV, a 6th Generation Cranberry Grower.
Stephen says the last substantial rainfall was on August 8th, which means their natural reservoir is not producing water.
"The thing that probably scares us the most is the fact that we are trying to balance flooding cranberry bogs, as well as trying to protect for frost, and by the way we have to pay attention to the smoke in the sky, for the event that we do have a forest fire so, it’s very very dangerous right now," said Stephen.
The water you do see is all coming from wells that are being pumped, which the cost of diesel fuel to keep them running is a lot.
"We’ve probably spent more money in fuel cost this month than we have the entire year thus far, and it’s pretty substantial," said Stephen.
An issue for every grower in New Jersey, that’s why they’re crossing their fingers and hoping for several inches of rain.
"We always say to ourselves it could be worse, we just do the best we can with what we have and we move forward. We’re thankful for the gifts that we have to be able to do this in the first place," said Stephen.