Starvation Alley’s young owners, Jared Oakes and Jessika Tantisook
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Starvation Alley’s young owners, Jared Oakes and Jessika Tantisook
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Oakes drives a water reel through the bog to dislodge cranberries from their vines and push them to the surface.
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Oakes drives a water reel through the bog to dislodge cranberries from their vines and push them to the surface.
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A harvester wades through the flooded cranberry bog
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A harvester wades through the flooded cranberry bog
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Dogs offer moral support.
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Harvesters drag wide “booms” that corral the floating cranberries towards the shoreline.
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Harvesters drag wide “booms” that corral the floating cranberries towards the shoreline.
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Boggers don fashionable hip waders and boots to keep dry.
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Boggers don fashionable hip waders and boots to keep dry.
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A helpful black lab provides quality control.
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A helpful black lab provides quality control.
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Once corralled, the harvest team pulls the floating haul towards the shoreline.
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Because Starvation Alley is an organic cranberry bog, practices that normally control weed growth aren’t allowed. As a result, the harvesters must weed by hand.
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Once corralled, the harvest team pulls the floating haul towards the shoreline.
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The concentrated cranberry haul, ready for processing.
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Because Starvation Alley is an organic cranberry bog, practices that normally control weed growth aren’t allowed. As a result, the harvesters must weed by hand.
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A motorized machine pulls the cranberries from the water to be processed.
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The concentrated cranberry haul, ready for processing.
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Dogs offer moral support.
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A motorized machine pulls the cranberries from the water to be processed.
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Volunteers of all ages help with the cranberry washing.
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A bogger shovels huge piles of tangled cranberries for rinsing.
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A bogger shovels huge piles of tangled cranberries for rinsing.
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Volunteers of all ages help with the cranberry washing.
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Cranberry harvesting is hard, cold, wet work. A local Washington brew takes the edge off.
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Pure, clean cranberries, ready to be frozen and cold-pressed.
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Cranberry harvesting is hard, cold, wet work. A local Washington brew takes the edge off.
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Pure, clean cranberries, ready to be frozen and cold-pressed.
On Long Beach Peninsula, that thin finger of sand extending from Southern Washington’s coastline, Starvation Alley Cranberry Farm is busy growing your new favorite cocktail mixer. In a dark bog surrounded by 10 acres of Northwest farmland, each late fall and winter young owners Jared Oakes and Jessika Tantisook wade through the waist-high water to skim and collect cranberries every October. Waterlogged boggers yank thick fistfuls of weeds entangling the crimson haul before sending the berries to be cleaned and flash-frozen.
All photos by Giles Clement. See more of his work at gilesclement.com
