Sean Cutts
Appearances
The Journal.
Canned or Homemade? America’s Biggest Cranberry Company Wins Either Way
You know, to me, October is the most beautiful month of the year. You know, it's fall. The weather is beautiful. The leaves are starting to turn. And then when you have a cranberry bog that's just covered in crimson fruit floating on top, there's really not much more beautiful than that, in my opinion.
The Journal.
Canned or Homemade? America’s Biggest Cranberry Company Wins Either Way
In the wintertime, the bogs are flooded to protect the cranberry vines. And then in April, we drain the flood and the cranberries stay dry for the rest of the growing season until we harvest.
The Journal.
Canned or Homemade? America’s Biggest Cranberry Company Wins Either Way
Well, the Thanksgiving thing, we're kind of winding down from the harvest. We've got a few little fall jobs that we do, cleaning our ditches and such, but we're pretty much in recovery mode. For our family, harvest is seven days a week, and it's night and day for a month straight. And so by the end, we're pretty wiped out. Hopefully, we're still all talking to each other and whatnot.
The Journal.
Canned or Homemade? America’s Biggest Cranberry Company Wins Either Way
But the month of November is a good time for us to rest a little bit and gather together as a family and be thankful for our blessings.
The Journal.
Canned or Homemade? America’s Biggest Cranberry Company Wins Either Way
So Ocean Spray is a cooperative, which means that it is owned by the growers. And in the case of Ocean Spray, the growers are about 700 family farms scattered across North America.
The Journal.
Canned or Homemade? America’s Biggest Cranberry Company Wins Either Way
Those of us who have future generations that we envision coming into the business in the future, we're generally in favor of keeping the brand as a co-op. Simply because even though we would have gotten a nice payout up front, long term, that's probably not what was best for our farms. And one of the great things about the cooperative for us farmers is because we own it, we keep all the profits.