Based in Pulaski, the company had its first harvest last year at its Williamstown site. The yield was about 25 percent or so of what Brower hopes to eventually reap, he said this week. Much, much better. Cranberries are in demand for flavoring juice mix drinks, added flavor for some wines. In fact, Brower noted, he recently sold about a ton of berries for wine to Martin's Honey Farm and Meadery in Sterling.
Cranberries are also popular in many recipes.
Brower is packaging a lot of fresh cranberries. The fresh berries and the dried berries are very good for you, he added. They help fight urinary tract infections, more so in women, and have recently been linked to helping to fight breast cancer as well, he said. Brower added that extensive studies are also under way at several universities on the link between the consumption of cranberries and its effect on cholesterol. Huge crates of cranberries, fresh from the field, are dumped into a conveyor system at a dairy barn Brower and his associates converted into a berry packaging facility.