Recycling Water....(it's an important step)

Cranberry Harvest is well under way, which means it's time to start moving water from one bed to another.  Our style of marsh is completely reliant on gravity to flow water from one end of the marsh to the other.  In a perfect world the cranberries would be harvested from the high end to the low end.  I don't know about your world, but ours is not perfect.  Each bed is assessed based on color, variety, and age of bed.  These factors determine the order in which they will be harvested.  Sometimes a bottom bed will have to be harvested before and upper bed and that's where the ability to recycle water is crucial.  We are blessed with a huge water supply, but we still need to be stewards of our natural resources.

Water from the bottom beds flows into the pump back ditch where we then transfer it back to our main reservoir to reuse.  The means of transfer is through an above ground/under ground hose.  The pump below pumps 12,000 gallons/minute.

A couple of farm boys wait for the hose to fill up with water.

Watching the water empty into the main pond.

After a couple minutes of watching, the boys settle into their favorite pastime - throwing rocks.

I can't help but look around at all the fall textures in nature.

Rural life and working outdoors affords us plenty of time for seeing the little things nature has to offer like this grasshopper Peter spotted in the sand.

One more look at the giant stream of water before heading back home.

I hope you enjoyed another tour around our cranberry farm.

For more on cranberry harvest 2015 click here

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