The day after Labor Day was memorable for two things: the exodus of the city people and the beginning of the cranberry season. I was not so fortunate as the children of Marjorie Ann, our washwoman. They went "up Westward" to Carver for a month or six weeks and returned with new clothes and marvelous accounts of camping out and of the workers on the big bogs. My eyes grew large at tales of high words and fist fights over best rows and scoops from somebody's tops. My father’s pickers worked because "it was so healthy to be out of doors;" some, because it was "great fun;" and others, as they frankly admitted, because they liked a little extra money for Christmas, for a trip to Boston, for a winter coat, or for lace curtains for the Parlor. Father boasted that he had college students, professors, and millionaire's daughters among his cranberry gangs.

Bright and early I was out at the head of the lane. I wore my pink sunbonnet, my blue denim apron, my armlets of black stockings, my little calico bag for checks. In my shining new six quart measure I had packed my rubbers, gloves, finger stalls [finger guards], my birch bark luncheon box that Aunt Georgia from Oldtown, Maine, had sent me for Christmas, and, best of all, a bottle of the usually prohibited coffee.

Down the schoolhouse hill came rattling a blue cart with seats along the side. These were Father's own invention: instead of the back-breaking boards laid in rows across the cart, our seats consisted of two long boards fastened by small pieces in the middle and at the ends, allowing quite an elastic spring. The ends stuck out in front just far enough not to hit the horse, and in back over the road. We youngsters loved to sit on those projecting ends that rocked so delightfully and dangerously. The oldest and stiffest ladies stood on a box to climb up the back of the cart, but we exulted in swinging ourselves up by the seat-ends.

Head gear ran from caps to sunbonnets or immense farmer's hats, decorated with colored ribbons or strings. All wore armlets to protect the wrists from scratches from the wiry vines; some fastened their finger stalls to the stocking armlets; others preferred old gloves with stalls of unbleached cotton cloth. On wet days, when the bog reverted to its original swamp, we wore yellow oilskin aprons, which we discarded as soon as the sun came out to dry the bog off with amazing rapidity.

By eight or half past we reached the bog, which had been already lined off, and where the screen had been set up on empty barrels. Some growers lined off the sections between the ditches into individual rows but Fred, our overseer, made the rows wide enough to admit four between the lines; a more social arrangement. To be the one to take up to the screen the first full measure of the season was a coveted distinction. Fred, our hired man, was the fastest picker anywhere about. He could pick a barrel — sixteen six-quart measures — a day with his bare hands. He would sit down beside me and silently work his hands like little machines, and soon in a marvelous way the measure would be filled and properly heaped — a level measure would not be accepted at the screen. We must heap up the berries until not another one would stay on the pile. Old Mrs. Taylor, who presided over the screen because she was too stiff to pick, was the life of the bog with her little jokes when we climbed up the bank with our measures to get our checks.

In our day cranberry raising was an avocation; Father was a doctor; other owners were sea captains, store keepers, or carpenters. It was the thing to have a little bog where you could raise enough cranberries for winter, to pay for the care of the bog, and a little interest on the investment. Consequently the bogs were far from uniform in character and yield. Old bogs were sanded to keep the vines short. To leave bottoms; to pick dirty measures thick with leaves, vines, and sticks; not to heap the berries; these were the signs of the poor picker. The season lasted for about a month according to the size of the crop and the weather.

Before the first day was over we began to complain of backache and cramps in our legs. We could work faster kneeling but we had to stretch out sometimes as at a Roman banquet to ease the intolerable pain in the knees. We became more hardened as the season wore on. Usually we did not nibble at the berries; their acidity was their defense. But sometimes we grew thirsty or were bored by sparse picking. When we had swallowed one cranberry, the charm was broken: however puckery it was. we must take one more and then it was hard to stop. The last year that I picked, we carried huge wooden scoops with wooden teeth. We rested them on the ground and rocked them back and forth as we pushed them through the vines. Each held three or four quarts and filled the measures with amazing rapidity. On the other hand we received less pay for a measure. From ten cents, we were reduced to six cents for the six quarts.

"Knock off!" shouts Fred, and we dash up the bank for our baskets stored in the cart or hanging on the pine boughs. Substantial food it was: thick meat sandwiches with crusts intact, hard boiled eggs, pies, cake, cookies, gingerbread. The first salad that I ever tasted was one of the delicacies exchanged at the bog - a favorite place for swapping food and recipes. The older pickers gossiped the noon hour away. We children ate rapidly in order to have time for our favorite game of duck-on-a-rock. I can't remember that we ever played it at school. It just went with cranberrying.

Cranberry pickers enjoy a lunch time picnic in West Yarmouth.

At five o'clock we knocked off for the day and received white quart checks for the contents of our measures. Every night we tied these up into packages which we could exchange for measure checks or we tied them all into dollar bundles.

Though the picking season was short, the care of the bogs was a year-long duty, with dangers from frost in winter, multitudes of worms in summer, drought or too much rain. Long after the berries were harvested, the women screeners worked in our barn. At one end of the long screen was the winnowing machine, which got rid of sticks and dirt; at each side of the screen, which rested on barrels, were three or four women, who picked over the fruit, taking out frosted, rotten, or withered cranberries, so that when the board was removed from the mouth of the screen by the last screener, a stream of clean hard berries poured into the waiting barrel.

Captain Parker next door used to save his crop until March to obtain high prices, but so much fruit rotted away during the winter that the loss hardly warranted the delay. Growers had all sorts of ideas about raising cranberries and defended their pet theories at the expense of friendship. Should the bogs be flooded in winter? How early should you let the water off? What was best for worms? Away down in our field was a huge iron kettle, a regular witches' cauldron, where the hired men steeped tobacco juice to spray over bogs in summer.

The berrying wound up with a gala day, when we picked the small North Dennis bog. We consoled ourselves when berries were scarcest and knees were crampiest, by thoughts of the good time ahead - the long ride, the visits from Dennis friends, and the special treat supplied by Father - watermelon, ice cream, candies. It was a real picnic. There was so much feasting and fun that with difficulty did we succeed in getting the patch picked at all. Usually at the end we let some piece go. It was dark when we reached home after our slow ride through the woods. "Goodbye!" we shouted to one another. "See you again at the bog next year! or with less gusto, "See you at school next Monday." How good the baked beans and Indian pudding that Mother had kept warm for us in the oven! After supper I put away my last bundles of checks, packed up my trusty old measure, added up once more my hard won riches, as much as fifteen or twenty dollars - a tidy sum it seemed to me and it went a long way in the nineties. Later on, I would go with Mother on an excursion to Boston, where I would invest in a new coat, dress, or muff and tippet [a long, wide shawl or scarf] - and then have five dollars left for Christmas gifts.

Cranberrying was over until next year.

Excerpted from an essay by Caroline R. (Pulsifer) Siebens (1881-1970).
Caroline’s father was Dr. Thomas Benton Pulsifer, town doctor for Yarmouth in the later 1800s. They lived at 382 Route 6A. Caroline is the smiling girl in the cover photo and below on the dark horse. Read more about the history of cranberry cultivation on Cape Cod in this article in Cape Cod Life magazine.