Cranberry Harvest & Machinery

2O12 & 2O16

The initial Cranberry Harvest Series took place at one bog in Sandwich, MA. In 2O12. This is much earlier than other series on the website, but it is relevant to understanding the arc of Schiffer Noland Studio’s practice. 

The machinery pictures, taken mostly at Hayden Manufacturing in Wareham, MA. took place mostly in 2O16.

  • The harvest takes place on Cape Cod at about the end of September.

    To be invited up onto the apparatus to take pictures, is an unusual occurrence. That vantage point, being at a distance high above the work taking place below is unique.

    One worker in the flooded bog is busy corralling the floating berries with a long rubber strap which is attached to him, tightening it little by little, leaning at times into a nearly 45 degree angle, in the direction he wants to go, dragging through water with that large and heavy belt which is pulled and tightened little by little into a concentric circle, or rather an oval.

    The color of berries, which have been floated to the surface in the process of flooding the bog, are varied from black to white with every shade of red and pink in between. The ever tightening oval turns that mix of distinct colors into a burnt red sea with swirls of vermillion, which floats on the flooded black pond.

    Pictures of the process need to be taken, a record needs to be made: the workers in the water, the driver of the truck which they all pile into at the end of the day, and the driver of the other truck, the one built with metal mesh sides, like a huge thirty plus foot long colander, into which berries travel through a massive hose, somehow most of them keeping their intact, hard, round shapes. Everyone gone. Every berry gone. A red tailed hawk, a couple of lost sea gulls, and a body of water looking more burnt brown than black right now.

IN THE BOG 2O12

IN THE SHOP 2O16

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White Cells 2O22