Our History
The first mention of cranberry
bogs in Plympton appears in the town warrant posted for the annual spring town meeting in 1885. In it a request was made that
the town exempt from taxation bogs which had not reached bearing age. We suspect that the town acted favorably for bog acreage
increased in town from that date.
George W.Randall and his brother Gilbert
H. Randell were Plympton's pioneer cranberry growers. About if not exactly 1890 they built their first bog down opposite the
eastern end of Mayflower Road. This first bog was their so-called Screen House bog. Quickly followed the
Brown Swamp bog and soon after the Round bog. In later years they added the Whiting Field bogs, and a few acres above their
reservoir.
From 1890 to 1910 the bogs of the Randall Bros. down at the end of Mayflower Road
were the Mecca for local pickers. The berries were all picked by hand and from one to two hundred pickers were kept busy on
these small bogs. It usually required from six to eight weeks to complete the task. Pickers came in from Carver and Halifax
to aid the local folks in the harvest. Year after year several more came from the distant cities of Fall River and New Bedford.
The Corey Whiting Cranberry Company purchased the bogs in June 1910 for $3,400.
The Company was managed by Herbert F. Whiting and Burt Corey. The Corey Whiting Cranberry Company
expanded the bogs yearly. By 1917 the Company had 14 acres and 3 rods of bog under cultivation.
Fruit
from the Corey Whiting Cranberry Company was sold under the New England Cranberry Sales Company under several labels including
Mayflower, Skipper, and Honker.
The Corey Whiting Cranberry Company
was dissolved in 1941. Robert Whiting farmed the bogs until the early 1980's when Wayne and Karen Barnes purchased the farm
and named in Blue Heron Farms. Jeff and Kim LaFleur purchased the farm in April 2009.
The
Round, Screenhouse and Brown Swamp bog are all still in production. The Round bog has just over one acre of a variety of cranberries
known as Whiting –Randells discovered in Plympton in 1888.
Today, Mayflower Cranberries grows four different varieties of cranberries.
Stevens, Early Blacks, Howe and Whiting Randell.