Page 65 - CulturalAdventures3 final

spread on top of the clay and a drainage channel is etched around the peri-
meter.

The only insect enemy is the black-headed fire worm, Courtney said. They
can reproduce three or four times in a year and if they do, “you can lose
everything. And we have.” Spraying against this modest-looking fiend is
careful, and limited. Other chemical interventions are also conservative,
Courtney said, with organic sulfur added to keep the sand as acidic as the
plants like.
The sandwiched construction of the cranberry beds allows Courtney to
flood and drain the berry fields when the weather starts to get cold. Once the
berries are coated with ice, they are protected from freezing. The cold is an
ally in the last stages of ripening, turning the small hard berries the deep
crimson that makes them stars of the holiday dinner plates. “The lower and
lower temperatures make the berries a deep, deep red,” Courtney said.

The cranberries are all dry harvested, with 50-year-old mechanical pickers
that resemble a comb. The berries are dropped into a box while a fan blows
off the tiny leaves. The cranberries are sold locally, online and to area
stores including Hannaford Supermarkets, and keep well for four to five Maine wild blueberries at the peak of readiness.
months in storage. Customers who are lucky enough to be able to drive to Photo by Courtney Hammond.
the farm store can buy five or 10 pound boxes, to use in smoothies, cakes, In the 1950s, after Courtney’s grandfather Elijah had re-
muffins, and sauce. turned from World War II, he started a gas station and
bought Lynch Hill with its blueberry fields, named it for
one of Harrington’s earliest settlers, John F. Lynch, who
was eking out a living in the early 1800s until he became a
customs agent for the federal government, enforcing the
first fish and game laws. The farm branched out into cran-
berries in the late 1980s, after Courtney’s father left his
work as a high school teacher and joined the family busi-
ness.
Today the Hammond family businesses include an oil
delivery business, a native grape crop, holiday balsam
wreaths, and also a shiitake mushroom growing business,
with local restaurants among the steady buyers, as well
as their mainstays, blueberries and cranberries. Count on
Organic shiitake mushrooms ready for harvest. Photo by Courtney them to keep elaborating the products, starting with a fine
Hammond. blueberry jam. The entrepreneurial family makes cran-
berry sauce and cranberry vinegar, spiced with cinnamon
and cloves and sweetened, that could jazz up a pork roast gravy or a roasted squash salad. But the fresh berries are wonderful added
to a pan for de-glazing after cooking pork chops, popping the heat as the sauce swirls, or in addition to apples in a crisp. They are
available in season at their store, Rte 1A in Harrington, or online at lynchhillfarms.com

Above: Bob and Courtney Hammond
during wet cranberry harvest. Photo
by Anna Emerson.

Left: Cranberry wet harvest. Cran-
berries have been corralled and will
be pumped from the bog. Photo by
Anna Emerson.

63