By Frank Kummer, Philadelphia Inquirer
Generations of the Lee family gathered this fall, as they have every year since 1868, to harvest cranberries at the Lee Brothers Farm in Chatsworth, Burlington County.
Stephen V. Lee III, 78, has farmed the fruit for decades. He walked Thursday on the sand road of a bog filled with scarlet berries that bobbed at the water’s surface.
Workers, including family members, stood hip-deep in the water, raking berries toward a submerged vacuum that sucked the fruit to the top of a truck. There, a machine washed them as they bounced along a conveyor that spewed them by the thousands into a truck.
Cranberry harvesting is an annual colorful ritual in New Jersey. But this year is anything but
“I haven’t seen this in my lifetime,” Lee said of a drought that farmers trace to summer.
The hues of the turning leaves that surround the farm are subdued. The grass is brown. A reservoir that pulls from the nearby Wading River is nearly empty. Campers along the nearby Batona Trail are prohibited from lighting campfires.
As Lee climbed into his truck, the temperature was heading toward an all-time high for the day of 82 in Philadelphia, last reached in 1946.
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