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Country Life: Crunchy, Crispy Cranberries
Anisha Satya, for Country Life
You wouldn't eat a sprig of rosemary, a whole spring onion stalk, or raw garlic. Some produce best serves the palette as an ingredient - like fresh cranberries.
"Asking someone to taste them is a little bit like saying 'well, here's a little piece of rhubarb' or 'here's a crabapple'," cranberry farmer Kate Buckley says.
"They're an ingredient. You use them in things, so we make smoothies."
Buckley is one half of Cranberries Westland, New Zealand's only cranberry farm, near Hokitika on the West Coast. The farm neighbours native forest, and workers will often spot a kererū over the fence, or hear the screech of a weka.
Most birds (bar the pūkeko) stay away from the berry beds.
"They're too sour for them," husband and farmer Kevin MacGregor told Country Life.
He leads the farming side of the operation, managing the experimental grow beds, and conversing with farmers in the United States to learn more about the berry.
MacGregor farmed deer in the North Island before his second job as a fridge repairman landed him in a field of cranberries.
"We moved down here," Kate said, "and Kevin came to fix somebody's freezer."
Kevin and the previous owners, Marj and Tony Allan, got talking, eventually buying the business off them in 2017.
Cranberries grow on bushy beds, low to the ground. A new bed will fruit within two years, but it takes five years for them to embed themselves in the soil enough to be harvested.
The area's climate suits the berries well, and New Zealand lacks the pests and mould that wreak havoc on farms in the US.
But there are drawbacks - the key one being that they're on their own.
"We don't have colleagues to work things out with," Kate said. "[Kevin] spends quite a bit of time working with cranberry growers in sort of British Columbia, Washington State, Oregon State, so that West Coast side ... so he can take that learning, and apply it here."
It's been almost 10 years of non-stop learning for the couple - but there's something about the berries they can't get enough of.
The fresh fruits are crunchy and tart, which is why Kate turns them into smoothies, jellies and relishes. They work well on a cheeseboard, when cooked with a slab of venison, or popped into a glass of gin with some rosemary.
"Cranberries are a superfruit, and they taste great when you partner them up with other things."
RNZ
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