I took Friday off from work, and met my sister and our Mom in town early in the morning, and onto a Hawkeye Stages bus we went. We were heading to Warren Wisconsin to the 41st Cranberry Festival. None of us had been there before, so it sounded like a great reason to go. We weren’t sure what to expect, other than there are supposed to be a lot of vendors and a lot of people. I was anxious to find out more about the cranberries. How I envisioned the cranberry fields were that they were all under water and just waiting to be harvested. Yea, I’m thinking about the commercial where the guys have boots on and are standing in the fields. Well after around 2 1/2 hours riding the bus, we finally got to the town. Warren’s population in 2011 was 366 people. And guess how many people they expected were there for the festival in 2012? 120,000!!! Even though the people just swarm this little town, it’s really very organized. I guess if you have had this for 41 years, you probably got this down by now. When we got off the bus, the first thing off the bat was a huge hill to walk up.
Mom and her friend hitching a ride up the hill
But we found a golf cart and Mom and her friend hitched a ride. There were so many vendors all in this one little town I just couldn’t believe it. But after getting some brat’s and kraut or hot dogs in our bellies – off we joined the crowds.
But first things first.
My sister and I. It’s too funny that you can see our legs!
Now if you were looking for something to buy and you didn’t find it here, you just plain were not looking hard enough. There were 1200 vendors and just about everything imaginable. We even stopped to watch a pie eating contest. The one guy must have done this before, because he was done way before the rest of them.
Pie eating contest
We shopped for awhile and then off to get on another bus to head out into the cranberry fields. We had sweat in places that just wasn’t cool and decided that to sit down and ride around in a bus would just do the trick to cool off. OK this is what I learned about cranberries. The fields only get flooded when they want to harvest them or before winter to save the plants from the winter cold. The berries grow on the ground which reminded me of hay plants, and they average around 23,000 lbs of berries per acre.
Berries still in the field
Miles and miles of cranberry fields
There were so many places to buy honey today and while we were on our bus tour of the fields we found out why. They said that in order to pollinate the plants, they bring in semi loads of bees. YIKES! Can you imagine? The one lady who we think lived on one of the farms said it’s just not cool being out in the fields during the four weeks that the bees are there because the farmers drive 4 wheelers and get hit by bees flying around! Once the tour was over, we went to find some treasures to buy and soon it was time to get back on the bus. My sister and I laughed because we weren’t sure where Mom was and we found out that she got to the bus before we did.
It turned out that they were waiting for us
At the end of the day, I did buy something for our in our yard and I’ll take a picture of it this week to show. I didn’t buy any cranberries, but I did buy some cranberry wine. What perfect weather and a great day! As for me now? It’s late and I’m heading to soak in the tub and put my jammies on. Humm… is it too soon to open my bottle of wine?