A Final Harvest At The Thacher Bogs

 HARWICH – The Thacher family has been harvesting cranberries on their property off Great Western Road since the mid-1950s. This past week members of the family were busy harvesting what will be the last crop to be produced there. 

 The Harwich Conservation Trust has purchased 50 acres around the 21 acres in and around the bogs and is planning an eco-restoration project, a “rewilding” of the land, designed to improve wildlife diversity, wetland health and water quality and create walking trails. 

 “Eco-restoration of this site could create free-flowing stream channels with enhanced fish passage and connectivity through natural wetland habitats,” Harwich Conservation Trust Executive Director Michael Lach said when announcing the planned purchase of the property.

 “It’s important to recognize that it’s the economic market forces that are causing local bog owners to look for alternatives,” he added. “Overproduction of cranberries in the Midwest and in Canada has hurt the local market.” 

 Ray Thacher Jr. said this week that he entered into a two-year lease to harvest the cranberries when the trust purchased the property. He said the trust will take over the property in January.

 “Since we still need to fund the design and permitting phases, we do not yet have a timeline for completing the eco-restoration,” Lach said last week.

 All of the berries in the supermarkets now come from Wisconsin, which produces the most cranberries of any state, according to Thacher. 

Thacher said this year the market price for cranberries is said to be $22 per 100-pound barrel of berries. In the 1980s growers were getting $50 a barrel, and in 1998 they got $80 per barrel. It wasn’t easy surviving at $50 a barrel, he said. 

But cranberry farming has been a family business since the mid-1950s. His father, the late Raymond “Link” Thacher, farmed the bogs for 70 years. 

The elder Thacher’s life as a farmer actually began shortly after he graduated from high school when he bought a truck and bulldozer and started pitching in on the bogs of local farmers. The farmers would often pay for his services with pieces of the bogs, providing the foundation for a business and life dedicated to producing the little red berries at the heart of Cape Cod Life.

In 1956, Thacher bought the five-acre Dam Brook Bog in Harwich, close to the eventual family home on Main Street. In 1964, he and two partners bought an 80-acre parcel of bogs stretching across Great Western Road. From there the Thacher cranberry business grew and thrived.

With the sale of the property to the trust, Ray Thacher, Jr. said he will retain the two-acre bog adjacent to his home on the opposite side of Great Western Road and will continue to harvest berries there.