[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 93 (Thursday, June 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8048-S8049]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


     MASSACHUSETT'S CRANBERRY GROWERS CLARK AND GERALDINE GRIFFITH
 Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, my home State of Massachusetts is 
the leading producer, year in and year out, of cranberries in America 
and in the world. The economic contribution cranberries make to 
Massachusetts is impressive, with more than $200 million in payroll to 
Massachusetts workers and about 5,500 jobs for Massachusetts citizens. 
I am also proud that Ocean Spray's corporate headquarters are located 
in Middleboro, MA.
  I invite the attention of my colleagues to the article which follows 
from the November 1994 edition of Yankee magazine. It tells a poignant 
and all-American story of one cranberry growing family, that of Clark 
and Geraldine Griffith. Mr. Griffith's family goes back to the 1700's 
like many multigenerational cranberry families around our Nation. The 
article tells an impressive story of the mechanization and 
modernization of what remains, after all, a small family farming 
operation. It also reminds us of the vulnerability to weather and 
governmental actions of an important crop that is not subsidized by the 
Federal Government. And, most of all, it captures the spirit and the 
hard work of Massachusetts cranberry growers.
  Both Clark and Geraldine Griffith are fine citizens of my State, and 
I commend this article to your reading. I ask that it be printed in the 
Record.
  The article follows:

                 [From Yankee magazine, November 1994]

                Waiting for the Frost in Cranberry Land

       Clark Griffith works one row of cranberry vines at a time, 
     driving his water-reel tractor back and forth in a decreasing 
     spiral. The ride is rough and swaying, and he has to brace 
     his legs and keep a secure grip on the wheel so as not to 
     fall. The water reflects the light up into his eyes, and 
     Griffith squints to see the long stake that marks the 
     submerged row just combed and the red and yellow flags that 
     indicate the location of irrigation ditches. At the end of a 
     row he bends forward, pulls out the stake with one hand, 
     quickly turns the wheel with the other, and hurls the stake 
     back into the bog. Water mists the air as the metal rods of 
     the cylindrical beater comb the vines, and berries bob 
     through the white foam to the surface. Amorphous, blood-red 
     trails foam in the wake.
       Griffith, who owns 90 acres of bog, flooded this three-acre 
     section two days earlier and is now harvesting his cranberry 
     crop. A strapping man of 62 with peppery hair and a squarish 
     face, he runs the Griffith Cranberry Company in the town of 
     Carver, Massachusetts. Located about an hour's drive 
     southeast of Boston and just inland from historic Plymouth 
     Bay, the three precincts comprising the town--North, Center, 
     and South Carver--have more than 3,500 acres of active bogs: 
     Nearly half of the taxable land is directly or indirectly 
     cranberry related, and almost all of Carver's 121 growers are 
     members of the huge Ocean Spray cooperative. It is a town 
     where police cars sport the logo ``Cranberry Land USA'' and 
     cranberry vines are stenciled on the walls of the post 
     office.
       Carver is justifiably called the Cranberry capital of the 
     world. From Labor Day through Halloween, the town's farmers 
     bring in their crop, flooding fields late at night and 
     working bleary-eyed days. In the late fall of 1993 Griffith 
     knows the harvest will be disappointing. He frowns as he 
     reaches into a bin and scoops up glistening berries. The 
     weather has made for a year of small berries. ``It takes a 
     lot of small fruit to fill a box,'' Griffith says. He drops 
     the berries and watches as they bounce in the bin.
       Cranberries have always been a part of Carver. Up through 
     the 19th century, when Carver was a community of lumber 
     mills, gristmills, and iron furnaces, people gathered wild 
     cranberries solely for personal consumption. Griffith's 
     family moved here from Rochester, Massachusetts, around the 
     time in 1790 that the 847 souls who lived in Plympton's South 
     Precinct decided to secede from that community and form 
     Carver. His ancestors forged stoves, heaters, pans, and sinks 
     from the bog iron excavated from nearby Sampson Pond. But in 
     the late 19th century, as the iron industry began to wane, 
     his grandfather Alton and his great-uncle Lloyd decided to 
     start farming cranberries. Alton and Lloyd's first bog was 
     inconspicuously christened Bog One in 1902, and it still 
     produces good berries behind Griffith's house.
       Griffith started serious work in the fields when he was 13 
     and labored along with the 40 to 50 workers the family hired 
     at harvest time from the nearby mills in New Bedford. Pickers 
     then used hand scoopers, small wooden boxes with metal or 
     wooden teeth that were combed through the vines. ``When your 
     back got tired, you kneeled,'' recalls longtime Carver grower 
     Albertina Fernandes, ``and when your knees got tired, you 
     stood up.'' But for Griffith, the work was exciting. ``I 
     always considered harvest season to be fun,'' he says. ``I 
     grew up with it, and there was always a gang around laughing 
     and joking.''
       Mechanization in the mid-1950s revolutionized the industry. 
     ``It used to take 60 days to do 60 acres. We can now do four 
     to six acres in a day,'' says Griffith, who employs only four 
     fulltime workers. Most equipment is handmade, much of it 
     cannibalized from old cars and trucks. ``When someone 
     discards a piece of equipment, that is what we use,'' says 
     Wayne Hannula, a grower who constructs sanders from old Dodge 
     pickups. ``We all built our own equipment because we all know 
     what we want.''
       If the temperature drops too low, it can kill the berries, 
     so there are now daily frost reports. Many farmers have a 
     Chatterbox, an electronic monitoring device that calls them 
     on the phone if it gets too cold. If that happens, the grower 
     has to flood the bogs so that the berries will not freeze. 
     ``The frost can come anytime,'' says Griffith. ``Sometimes it 
     is 4:30 in the morning, and you dash out. Fortunately, I have 
     all electric sprinklers, so all I have to do is snap 
     switches.'' Yet even with the innovations, the work still has 
     its hardships. ``If you have worked all day and the frost 
     comes early, you don't get any sleep,'' says Griffith. ``By 
     three o'clock in the morning, you are pretty tired. You try 
     not to stumble over things and fall in the water while 
     jumping ditches.''
       Even with machinery there are losses. ``I had an evening 
     when I got caught flat-footed,'' Griffith recalls of a night 
     in the early 1970s. ``The frost came early in the
      evening, and I didn't have sprinkler systems on all the 
     acreage. I had to flood a lot of it. We did everything we 
     could, but we lost a lot of cranberries that night.'' One 
     of the area's smaller growers lost part of his crop when a 
     neighbor--a newcomer to town--shut off his sprinklers and 
     left a note: ``Water your crops in the daytime; the noise 
     of the engines keeps us awake.''
       Griffith has experienced all the unexpected calamities that 
     have racked cranberry farmers. The worst event to befall the 
     industry, though, was not a natural calamity but a simple 
     government pronouncement. On November 9, 1959, the Secretary 
     of Health, Education, and Welfare announced that an 
     experimental weed killer, Aminotriazole, that was used by 
     some cranberry growers, had caused cancer in laboratory 
     animals. The market immediately dried up.
       ``We were done picking,'' recalls Griffith, ``and we had a 
     nice crop of berries sitting in the screen house. Of course 
     no one knew what was going to happen to them until the 
     decision was made by Ocean Spray and the government to dump 
     the berries. They came to us and counted the boxes. Then the 
     berries were just poured into dump trucks and taken away.''
       Aminotriazole is no longer sprayed on crops, and growers 
     are required to keep detailed records on the chemicals they 
     use. Griffith has files in his office dating back decades. 
     The office is located just up the street from his home. There 
     are maps of the bogs on the wall, a computer linkup to Ocean 
     Spray, and a stained-glass window of a cranberry scooper. He 
     stops by in order to retrieve from his computer information 
     on the previous day's delivery to the Ocean Spray processing 
     plant. He then picks up a stack of papers and drives to the 
     town hall in center Carver. He hitches himself out of his 
     pickup, and bog soil flecks off his shoes as he lumbers 
     toward the building. A gray-haired man greets him in the 
     hall.
       ``Clark, how is your crop?'' he nervously inquires.
       ``Terrible,'' Griffith frowns as he shakes his head. ``How 
     about you?''
       ``I got about three-quarters of what I got last year.''
       ``Everyone says that it is going to be down,'' Griffith 
     shrugs his shoulders. ``It's not what Ocean Spray estimated. 
     It can't be a bumper crop every year.''
       When Griffith finishes at the town hall, he heads back to 
     his bogs. Around noon Griffith's wife, Geraldine, brings 
     coffee and brownies to Bog 20. The men and women emerge from 
     the water and enjoy a few moments of rest. After the break 
     Angel Vasquez mounts the water reel and starts harvesting the 
     rows. Workers smooth the floating fruit carpet with shiny 
     aluminum pushers while others corral the berries with a 
     series of long, white wooden booms. Water presses against the 
     sides of their chest-high rubber waders as firm cranberries 
     bob against their calves. Swarms of small black spiders 
     scamper over the thickening red mass toward the shore. 
     Swallows flock to the water to gather the unexpected bounty.
       Griffith drives the winding series of bumpy one-lane dirt 
     roads, checking on his other crews, tending the levels of his 
     various bogs, flooding some and draining others. Before he 
     eats dinner with Geraldine, Griffith checks on the latest 
     frost report and plans for the evening vigil. He talks of 
     slowing down, of doing less work. His house is backed by the 
     moss-covered pines that surround the land. It has a beautiful 
     view of the bog, of the dark green vines that his family has 
     spent generations tending and harvesting. One day it will 
     make for a tranquil retirement spot. But now, after dinner, 
     Griffith drives over to a [[Page S8049]] pump house and draws 
     water from Sampson Pond to flood Bog 22 for the morning pick. 
     When he returns home, he checks the weather and 
     waits.
     

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