Farm History

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The first mention of cranberry bogs in Plympton appears in the town warrant posted for the annual spring town meeting in 1885.

 

George W.Randall and his brother Gilbert H. Randall 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.  They expanded the bogs yearly. By 1917 the Company had 14 acres and 3 rods of bog under cultivation.

 

The Corey Whiting Cranberry Company dissolved in 1941. Robert Whiting farmed the bogs until the early 1980's when Wayne and Karen Barnes purchased the farm and named it 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 under one acre of a cranberry variety named Whiting–Randalls discovered in Plympton in 1888.

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Today, Mayflower Cranberries has 112 total acres of which 23.6 acres are cranberry bogs, the balance being the reservoir, wetlands and upland buffer areas that support the bogs .We are growers for Ocean Spray Cranberries.  Ocean Spray is a farmer owned cooperative.