To the Editor:

Fifteen years ago, the A.D. Makepeace Company reinvigorated the cranberry harvest festival which had been abandoned by the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers’ Association. Our primary goal at the time was to find a fun way to educate our Southcoast neighbors on the details of cranberry growing. In its early years, the Cranberry Harvest Celebration featured a small number of vendors and our employees chatting one-on-one with guests at bogside.

Since then, the event has grown to a full-fledged extravaganza with more than 100 vendors and activities. It attracts tens of thousands of visitors from all over the world.

Today, the cranberry industry faces a variety of new challenges, from changing weather patterns to oversupply. Our fellow growers lack the resources to support the Celebration at the level they once did. Early October brings the very busiest days of the year for all of us in the cranberry industry.

We’re pleased to announce that the American Bus Association has once again named us a “best of the best” in North America, along with our Plymouth County friends at Fuller Craft Museum and Pilgrim Hall Museum. And we have once again been recognized by Yankee magazine as a recommended destination.

Amid the awards and accolades, we think back to the early days and our original objective, and we have decided to return to the more intimate approach to education. The Fifteenth Annual Cranberry Harvest Celebration on October 6 and 7, 2018, will be the last.

While the Celebration has grown each year, so has our bog tour initiative, and we now plan to expand that effort. Throughout the harvest season, we host bus tours, school groups, senior citizens, recreation departments, and others from throughout the region and beyond. On seven dates in September and October, the general public can visit to learn more about the cranberry industry. Last year we held our first pick-your-own cranberries events and they were well received, so this year we are offering more.

We hope the public will join us this October as we celebrate, and we hope many will join us again in 2019 for our educational events. We sincerely thank our employees, sponsors, vendors, volunteers, partners, and guests for their support over the past 15 years.

Michael P. Hogan

President/CEO