Cranberry Harvest At Double Trouble State Park Slowly Fading Into The Past

Decades ago, the cranberry bogs at Double Trouble State Park were turning crimson during "Red October."

Workers spent hours each day bent over bogs, threshing cranberries by hand with wooden cranberry scoops, trying to separate the berries from the vines and leaves. They lived in wooden bunkhouses in the area now known as the Double Trouble Historic Village.

Those day have disappeared. By 1964 - the Crabbe family - longtime owners of thousands of acres in the park and founders of a once-robust lumber and cranberry business - decided to sell the Double Trouble tract to the state of New Jersey.

The last partial cranberry harvest at Double Trouble was in 2012. But when Superstorm Sandy slammed into Ocean County on Oct. 29, 2012, the harvest came to an end.

Since then, no leaseholders have stepped forward, even though the state Department of Environmental Protection still has agricultural special use permits available, said spokesman Bob Considine.

"We have done outreach to growers and we’ve tried to incentivize interested parties for the required investment into the bogs, but have not as yet found a suitor," he said.

Part of the problem is the current cranberry marketplace, Considine said.

"The berry produced at Double Trouble produce far less per acre than the commercial farms that produce hybrid berries that produce much more per acre," he said. "There’s also a shorter growing season for that berry. So the pool of farmers who can make that commitment is limited."

First image: Courtesy of Daniel Crabbe

Second image: Patricia A. Miller