My mom told me that a year or two ago she saw a cranberry bog being flooded near Vancouver BC while she and my dad were driving so they pulled over to the side of the road to watch. Cranberry farms are so fascinating because they have a unique harvesting processed called “wet harvesting” where the fields are flooded and the brilliant red berries float to the top. Just like sunflower fields, pumpkins patches and berry farms, more and more cranberry farms seem to be opening up in the Pacific Northwest so the public can take brilliant photos and see part of their journey from plant to plate and cranberries play such a huge part in fall and winter foods. None of the farms are especially close to Seattle but they are all within a few hours drive and are in places many of us Seattleites often visit.
A Cranberry Plunge at The Bog Riverside Cranberry Farm
Most recently we visited the Bog Riverside Cranberry Farm in Langley BC about two hours north of Seattle in Canada. This cranberry farm has self-guided walking tours around their fields in September/October and you can even do something called the Cranberry Plunge at this farm. My mom and all her grandchildren were able to do the cranberry plunge together. This farm is family run and they seem like the sweetest family ever. There are many cranberry themed pastries, hot drinks and treats in their shop and we even picked up some cranberry jelly for our Thanksgiving meal. The self-guided tour here took about 30 minutes-it was a fairly short flat loop around a bog with QR codes on stations around the bog that you could scan to find out more about what was happening in the bog at each station. The Cranberry Plunge is 5 minutes in a bog and for our group it took about another 20-30 minutes within our time window to get everyone in their hip waders and boots and then wait for their turn in the bog. This tour was not a drop-in tour, we had to pre-book and the Cranberry Plunge sold out about a week before our visit.
Seasonal Cranberry tours at Hopcott Farms in Pitt Meadows BC
Hopcott farm is the reason I found other farms that have cranberry tour experiences between Vancouver and Seattle Washington. We drove past Hopcott farms on a summer drive to Pitt Lake in British Columbia and this butcher/market/bistro seemed like a fun place to visit. When I looked on their website in the summer I noticed they had cranberry tours and I made a note to remember it again in the fall. These tours were offered a little later than the ones I spotted at the Riverside Bog, so this is another place you might check out if you are looking for places to see how cranberries grow. When I looked at the website this tour is a 30 minute guided tour with 30 minutes after the tour to take pictures and you also get a bag of cranberries included for your group.
In Pitt Meadows there is also a place where you can bike a route called the Cranberry Trail and see the fields as you ride. There is such amazing biking in BC and we have to remember to bring our bikes one day. Another option might be to borrow some from Cycle City Tours a great bike shop where we tried out electric bikes through Vancouver this summer too.
A Cranberry Museum in Long Beach Washington
And as I was looking for other farms in British Columba, I found that in Washington State we even have a Cranberry Museum. Next October I need to visit Long Beach, WA and go to their cranberry festival. At this museum, you can visit the cranberry bogs year round and see a different part of the growing process on every visit. And of course, as with everything on the internet, please check with the Cranberry Museum website before you make plans to visit because these things always change.
And maybe a cranberry farm you can visit in Oregon too?
This one I need to find out a little bit more about but I thought I’d drop it here just in case anyone else knows. Apparently you might be able to visit Bowman Bogs in Southern Oregon between October and December but you’ll have to call ahead. I’m hoping I hear more about this one if I just put it out here as well. Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, Wisconsin and Massachusets are all places where cranberries grow and I had no idea that they grow in all these places.
A cranberry drink at Red Arrow Coffee in Seattle
And sometimes you can’t always get to a farm when you want to and recently I tried a cranberry and white chocolate coffee drink at Red Arrow Coffee in Seattle that was a really nice alternative to pumpkin spice that was something new to me with cranberries too. Next time I visit I’ll try to remember the cool name this drink actually had. The best part of Red Arrow Coffee is that it in a pocket garden in Seattle and it’s great for coffee outdoors that still feels like it’s a bit inside.
I’ll keep updating this list as I find more cranberry farms you can visit near Seattle. Now that we’ve had to visit one, I just wanted to get my research up in case you were looking for these places too.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)