My family has been growing cranberries in Wisconsin for over 100 years. My great, great, great grandfather helped develop the cranberry industry for Wisconsin by joining a farmer-owned cooperative to market and sell cranberries all over the country. When he began cultivating cranberries on our current farm, he and his family started with just 11 acres. 104 years later, we have worked to improve the land, and have grown our farm to 230 acres of just cranberry production. Every generation has ran the farm with the mindset of leaving the land better for the next generation so we can keep producing crops we can all be proud of.

Looking back on my childhood, some of my favorite memories revolve around driving up and down the gravel roads that wind throughout the marsh. In the summer, my brother and I would jump in the back of our dad’s pickup truck and we would be chauffeured through our own homemade water park that was the running irrigation while our parents would have our local country radio station blasting to drown out our squeals. In the spring, my dad would have to get up in the middle of the night, running the same irrigation system to protect the vines from frost. Every once in a while, he would wake me up during his shift and I would go down and watch the best movie that was on at 3AM (I remember watching a few black and white Godzilla movies) and we would wait until it was cold enough to turn the irrigation on. Then he would bundle me up in my favorite crocheted afghan and head to the pickup where he would have a cooler with some cranberry juice and beef sticks to snack on and we would drive around making sure the sprinklers were all working.

With all of those fun memories, I still never imagined I would grow up to become a cranberry grower. I always knew I wanted to come back home some day, but it wasn’t until I went to school for Sports Management, and began chasing what I thought was my dream job of working in Major League Baseball, that’s when I felt the pull to come back home. I am forever grateful that my parents encouraged my brother and I to go out and find our own passions without pressuring us that someone needed to take the farm over. If I hadn’t gotten off of the marsh, I never would have met my husband, Dan or some of my closest friends. It also taught me how to be a better employee and a better leader at work by seeing different traits I liked and didn’t like from previous employers and coworkers. It also helped me separate the relationship between my dad and my dad as my boss- something that was almost impossible before.

Since coming back to the marsh to begin my career, I have been learning from both of my parents on how to grow cranberries and how to run the business. There is no school for how to grow cranberries, it’s something you learn from others and adapt and change as you go. My dad married into cranberries with no previous background in them and learned from my grandfather. My dad is known as one of the best growers in the state and has gathered so much knowledge, it’s an intimidating realization how much I have left to learn. What used to be fun, late night joy rides, now turned to lessons and quizzes in the truck. Always asking “why do you do this?” or “what the hell are you talking about?” and getting a lengthy explanation or a “you’re a dumbass” look (if you know, you know). And my mom has an even harder task- teaching me how to understand numbers! I never understood how or why paying bills was so stressful until I sat down and did it. I never understood the roller coster of emotions of watching harvest numbers roll in every day, until I understood what the numbers meant. I never truly understood the impact of a bad storm or a hard winter/spring until I started thinking of the numbers. Who knew farming could be so stressful? My parents. They knew. And now I do too.

When I first started dating Dan, I told him I was planning on coming back to the marsh one day, and if he wasn’t ok with that kind of a life, HIT THE ROAD, JACK! He had no prior farm background, but the man loves his whitetail deer. Once he came out to the marsh and I showed him what it was like, he took one look at our support land and the woods full of oak trees, he knew he was going to be out here too. After we got married, Dan started working on the marsh during harvest and has been eager to learn and had no problem diving head first into his new lifestyle. Since then, he has taken on some pretty big roles on the marsh and running equipment that I would be too nervous to even touch. Even though he hasn’t had many opportunities to hunt out here as much as he originally planned, I think he can agree he’s ok with how things turned out.

We welcomed our first son, the start of the sixth generation, in August 2021. Porter, AKA CranBaby, has been the best thing to happen to us. He is a big boy with big hair, and a bigger personality. Since having Porter, I have spent most of my time at home, and watching the marsh from the sidelines. I am loving watching him grow and change every single day and can’t wait for him to grow up and experience this life. My mom was once asked in an interview “Why did you come back here? What do you think drew your kids back.” She said something along the lines of: once you see the beauty- the wildlife, the sunrises and sunsets, the crop, the harvest and you go elsewhere, it’s hard to forget. It’s something you just can’t experience anywhere else. This is more than our lifestyle, it’s our way of life.

Preach, mom. The pull I felt to come back home and be submersed in the way of life is a feeling that I hope Porter feels some day (and if he doesn’t, that’s ok too). But I hope he can grow up appreciating the beauty that surrounds us, how to appreciate and be thankful for the land, and how to leave the land better than when we found it.

That’s a quick glimpse at my life as a mom, wife, daughter, and cranberry grower. I appreciate you being here and I can’t wait to continue to pull back the roots and dive deeper into life with you.

‘Til next time,

-Amber