Take that, climate change!

I'm a cranberry fan.

Once in a while, when I have a drink-drink that's something other than a glass of wine, I enjoy a Cape Codder (vodka, cranberry juice, and lime). Or two. 

Cranberry and soda, with or without a squeeze of lime is good, too. If I'm out for lunch and not having an Arnold Palmer or a Diet Coke or just plain tap, it's usually a cranberry and soda. 

I don't usually keep cranberry (or any) juice around the house - too much sugar - but I like cranberry juice. I also like cranapple and crangrape. 

Cranberry juice, however, is good to keep around the house if you're susceptible to UTI's. Just sayin'. 

Thanksgiving wouldn't be Thanksgiving without cranberry sauce - the kind with cranberries in it, not the jellied blob. (Shout out to my sister Trish's cranberry sauce recipe.)

A turkey sandwich wouldn't be the a turkey sandwich without cranberry sauce.

I like to toss dried cranberries in my salad.

I like Cranberry Bog ice cream. Yum! If I'm on the Cape, that's my go to. (That an Ryder Beach Rubble.)

Speaking of the Cape, Chequessett Chocolate in Truro has a wonderful cranberry chocolae bar. (Chequessett, I heard, is temporarily closed. I hope it is just temporary. During the early days of covid, my sister Kath sent us all CARE Packages from Chequessett. A kathsend godsend.)

I like the color cranberry, which was popular when I was in high school. I had a cranberry parka, a cranberry madras skirt, a cranberry button down shirt, cranberry and black plaid luggage. Alas, cranberry as a color doesn't seem to be that widely used these days. (Has it fallen out of favor in the same way the name Maureen has? O tempora, o mores.)

Not that it has anything to do with Massachusetts - or cranberries - but I'm a big fan of the now defunct Irish group, The Cranberries. (RIP Dolores Riordan, the brilliant singer/lyricist.)

I like the fact that cranberries  are native New Englanders. I like that a lot of them are grown in Massachusetts. When it comes to agriculture, we're not known for much - unless you call Wellfleet Oysters agriculture - but we do have cranberries.

I'm always shocked when I read that Massachusetts is only #2 when it comes to cranberry growing. Weirdly - to me anyway - Wisconsin is #1. 

How can something so associated with summer on Cape Cod actually be majorly grown in Wisconsin? Ocean Spray - the cranberry growers co-operative that brings us so many great products -  is headquartered in Middleborough, Massachusetts, not Waukesha, Wisconsin. And the drink is called a Cape Codder, not a Milwaukee Slurp.

Anyway, I like the association of cranberries with my home state, even if we're just the first runner-up when it comes to cranberry production. And I'm alarmed that our bogs, thanks to climate change, are in jeopardy.

This has been going on for a while.

One of the reasons Wisconsin got to be #1 was that they have colder weather than we now do. Cranberry cultivation requires cold. And the ice that comes with frozen winters. Cold and ice cold have been in short supply here, as the climate shifts and we grow warmer. So cranberry growing has migrated to Wisconsin, and to Canada, over the years.

There is an upside to the downward slide in Massachusetts' cranberry-growing fortunes.  And that's turning our bogs into wetlands. (Or turning them back into the wetlands from whence they came.)

Wetlands, an area of land sturated by water, reduce the impacts of sea level rise and coastal erosion by acting as a sponge that can absorb flood waters. They can also mitigate climate change by storing carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Both make them a key strategy for Massachusetts’ battle to adapt to and fight climate change.

...So far, Massachusetts has completed six cranberry bog restoration projects totaling more than 350 acres. But another 18 restoration projects are already planned or under construction, according to the Division of Ecological Restoration. That would total more than 800 acres.

The seeds of grasses and shrubs that are necessary to re-grow the state’s lost wetlands are already here, lying dormant underground for more than 100 years.

“Once you bring them to the surface and bring back the right conditions, like water and sunlight, they explode back into heathy wetlands,” said Jessica Cohn, ecological restoration specialist at the Division of Ecological Restoration, which is part of the state’s Fish and Game agency. (Source: Boston Globe)

Cranberry growers have been handed a lemon, and they're turning that lemon into lemonade that will benefit all of us.

Sure, I'm sad to see our cranberry "industry" in such distress, to see our cranberry farmers - many running family operations that have been in business for over 100 years - going out of business. But I love the fact that some good's coming out of it. 

When our environment's under attack, what do you do? Stand up! Fight back!

Take that, climate change! 

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Did I mention that Dolores Riordan is brilliant? See for yourself.