Sorry I’ve been missing in action. I told you that shit was going to happen, but please stick with me as I try to get back in the game of blogging about weird museums. Here in the good ol’ United States of America people are preparing for the holiday of feasting and overall gluttony, otherwise known as Thanksgiving. This tumblr will try to honor items typically found on the table during a Thanksgiving meal (or the ones that might have a museum about them). Let’s start with cranberry sauce. Whether the real thing or the jellied kind shaped like a can, what kind of Turkey Day would be complete without cranberries (besides the annoying family friend, the complaining grandma, the little kid who refuses to eat anything and the goddamn football on the t.v.) Believe it or not, there is more than one cranberry museum in the world. The one that has the best website (and is closest to me in distance) is the Wisconsin Cranberry Museum in Warrens. For nearly one hundred years, there has been a museum dedicated to cranberries in this teeny tiny town of a few hundred people (though the population explodes to 100,000 during the Cranberry Festival every September) First known as the Cranberry Expo, the museum is now officially called the Wisconsin Cranberry Discovery Center.
Besides a guided tour of the six-acre cranberry marsh, there is a workshop exhibit of old woodworking equipment custom made by growers to harvest the fruit, including the wooden handrake. It took an entire week to make just one handrake (or 168 hours on facebook). A 150 year old dugout canoe is also display. It was first used by Native Americans who used cranberries for food, medicine and dye. The museum also features an ice cream parlor full of handcrafted ice cream and candy as well as cranberry pies, bread, scones and cookies. Where else are you going to find flavors like cranberry truffle and chocolate cranberry caramel swirl? No, seriously…where?
So while you’re stuffing your face this Thursday, be thankful you don’t have to be that guy in the picture handpicking cranberries in a partially-flooded bog.
