Cranberry Delivery Lesson
It takes a lot to get the cranberries from the farm to the grocery store. This lesson takes a closer look at one step in this process: getting the cranberries from the farm to the receiving station.
Harvest is an exciting time of the year for Cranberry growers. It is the time when they can finally count their berries. Most cranberry growers are paid by the barrel of cranberries they produce. A barrel is 100 pounds.
Growers first use a special picking machine to remover the cranberries from the vine. After the cranberries are removed from the vine they begin to float. Once floating they are gathered to one end of the bed where they are then picked up. Cranberries are picked up with a pump or a conveyer that places them into truck trailers. Once the trailers are filled, they travel to a cranberry receiving station (also known as a cleaning station).
At the receiving station the trucks weigh in. This first weight of the truck, trailer, and cranberries is called the gross weight. After they weigh in, the trailer is emptied into a large pool of water. Once the trailer is empty it returns to the scale. The next weight of the truck and trailer is called the tare.
With the gross weight and the tare weight scale technicians can calculate the net weight. They take the gross and subtract the tare to calculate the net. The net weight is the weight of the cranberries that were in the truck.
Once inside the cleaning station the cranberries are put into crates or bins. The same measuring process is used as with the trucks, except in a different order. First an empty bin is weighed to document the tare. Then the cranberries are added and the gross weight is reported. Using those two numbers the technicians can calculate the net.
With this lesson, student will divide into small groups to represent family farms. The teacher will supply each farm with a random amount of fresh cranberries. The farms will use bowls or wooden crates to represent trucks. They’ll fill the crates with cranberries and weigh them using a gram scale. After recording the weight of the crate and berries they will dump the berries into the pool (large bowl). Next, they will weigh the empty crate and record that weight. This process is repeated until all the cranberries on the farm have been delivered to the receiving station. At the end of harvest, each farm will calculate how much fruit they delivered.
