Photos by Cheryl Landes

Flax Pond Farms, in Carver, Massachusetts near Cape Cod, has 34 acres of cranberry bogs that have been cultivated since the early 1890s. In the fall, you can watch the cranberry harvest from a distance and schedule tours of the farm. Dried cranberries and other treats are for sale.

I stopped at the farm during a drive to Cape Cod and watched workers prepare containers of cranberries to be transported for processing. A stack of containers, locked together, are hooked up to a helicopter, which carries the containers to a flatbed truck and lowers them onto the bed while workers guide the pilot.

Then I stopped at the barn to watch a cranberry sorting demonstration. The cranberries are loaded into the top of the machine, and the machine shakes the berries while they roll down a conveyor belt. Any berries too small to process falls through the holes in a mesh to a bin under the machine.

The sorter stands at the machine and picks out any berries that are damaged or are too small to process but didn’t fall through the mesh. The sorter drops the rejected berries into the bin under the machine.

The good berries continue down the belt and land in another bin in front of the machine.

The farm also has 20 acres of woodlands that include 4,000 Fraser Fir Christmas trees, 20 acres of reservoirs, and a 10-acre pond.

Flax Pond Farms’ address is 58 Pond Street in Carver, Massachusetts. Visit their Facebook page for more information or call (508) 866-2162.