Harvest is Almost Over

We will be done harvesting cranberries by Tuesday morning and although it is such a relief to see that last truckload leave, it's also sad in a way. This is the culmination of a year's work. DH preps the beds for winter, waits for a below zero weather forecast, floods the marsh, makes ice, rolls the snow, sands the beds, drains the water, waits for spring melting weather to come, lays the irrigation pipe in the beds, protects the new buds against frost, fertilizes, combats worms, does some hand weeding, kills weeds with Round-up, brings in pallets of honeybees to aid in pollination, waters during drought conditions and extreme heat, makes a crop estimate, protects against frost again, preps all the harvest equipment, removes the irrigation pipes, floods the beds, beats the cranberries, booms the cranberries and loads them into dump trucks. Then the cycle repeats itself year after year. In between all this hard work is so much beauty. The after harvest frost on the beds is icy white, the spring greening of the vines, the Fourth of July bloom, the August fruit set, the coloring and sizing of the berries; it's all so beautiful and now we have to wait again. Then the questions come: Did I fertilize at the right times? Should I do it differently next year? Do I need more bees? Should I place the bees in a different spot? What about sanding? Maybe I should've sanded bed #3. Is my soil nutrition proper? What about the tissue nutrition? A new plan is made and then this year's questions will be answered next year at harvest time.