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The harvester for collecting cranberries is a small handy device with which you can pick berries much faster and better than in the classic way - by hand. It is recommended to have it for every cranberry picker. The harvester can be simply purchased as they are commercially available and commercially available. But you can also make it yourself, with your own hands from the available materials, it is not difficult and does not take much time.
How to make a DIY cranberry harvester
Anyone who has ever picked cranberries knows how difficult it is to pick small berries by hand and how long it takes to fill a basket to the top. It is much easier not to pluck them each separately, but to use a simple device for collecting - a cranberry harvester.
It is not difficult to make it with your own hands, for this you do not need to have any special knowledge and skills. It is best to use durable dry wood or a sheet of thin metal as a material for manufacturing. In order to make a harvester you will need:
- a piece of galvanized steel or tin;
- wooden planks no more than 1 cm thick;
- stiff thick wire for making teeth;
- a piece of wood or a piece of metal plate for a pen;
- scissors for metal;
- hacksaw or jigsaw;
- drill;
- quick-drying glue;
- self-tapping screws.
Steps to make a homemade cranberry harvester:
- Cut out a pattern from thick paper according to the drawing.
- Put it on a sheet of metal.
- Cut out the desired parts with scissors.
- Bend them one by one so that you can connect them into a single whole.
- Make teeth from the wire in the required quantity.
- To secure them, you will need a fastener that can be made from a small wooden block.
- Drill holes in it 1.5–2 cm deep and wide along the diameter of the rods.
- Make a handle of wood or metal of such a size that it fits comfortably in the hand.
- Bend the wire, grease the ends with a layer of glue and insert into the holes of the fastening strip, press down and wait until they stick.
- Screw the resulting structure to the body with self-tapping screws.
- Make a handle and also attach it to another bar.
- Connect the body and sidewalls with self-tapping screws.
- Use pliers to bend the edges of the body near the teeth located on the edge.
The second version of the harvester for picking berries, which can be built at home, is made of wood. It is even easier to make it: just cut the strips to the required dimensions and connect them together with glue or self-tapping screws. The teeth can be carefully sawed with a jigsaw or a hacksaw on the leading edge of the body and sanded off the cuts. To make the wood last longer, it can be varnished and dried. Alternatively, you can make prongs from metal rods.
Cranberry harvester drawing
To make it easier to understand what parts a cranberry harvester consists of and how to assemble it, you can take a look at the picture below. It is necessary to make all the component parts, also adhering to the drawing, so that they fit well together.
Principle of operation
This small device does not damage ripe berries and plants themselves during operation, ensuring quick and gentle picking of cranberry fruits. The handheld cranberry harvester looks like a large bucket or scoop with teeth or arcuate cutters at the front edge: they are used to pry and pick berries from the branches.The distance between them should be slightly less than the size of an average cranberry: this is enough for the fruits to pass between them and come off. The berries are picked with these prongs, then they fall into a container (device body), which is gradually filled with them. When this happens, the crop can be poured into a basket.
The cranberry harvester is very easy to use and efficient: twigs and leaves of plants pass through the teeth, so they do not get tangled or torn. The device has a rounded shape, so it can be used to collect cranberries growing in small depressions. Another advantage of the cranberry harvester: its use allows you to speed up the process of picking berries 3-5 times compared to the conventional manual method.
Harvesting cranberries with a harvester
It is very simple to pick berries with a cranberry harvester of our own production - just put the prongs under the cranberry branches and carefully lift it above the plants: the berries will easily break off and roll into a large container. It takes just a few hours to learn how to quickly harvest cranberries using a combine harvester. But, despite the simplicity, the cranberry harvesting technology requires certain rules to be followed. For example, you cannot jerk the harvester sharply if its teeth are entangled in twigs and leaves. If you pull it, you can tear off the shoots or, even worse, pull out the entire plant by the roots, after which it will dry out.
It is also important to consider the timing of harvesting cranberry fruits. It has been experimentally established that it is much better to pick berries when they have reached full ripeness, and not earlier. The berries themselves can ripen separately, but the underripe ones will spoil faster, they will not be as tasty, aromatic and healthy. In addition, picking unripe berries is harder, they sit more firmly on the branches, so picking will require some effort and take more time. If it so happened that a certain amount of leaves and twigs broke off along with the berries, then you do not need to get rid of them immediately: they can be collected, dried, and then brewed together with ordinary tea and drunk as a vitamin or medicinal drink.
Conclusion
A harvester for collecting cranberries is a very simple device in design and in use, which is recommended to have in your farm for any experienced or novice picker of these berries. It is easy to do it yourself from materials that are always at hand, using a simple detailed drawing. The cranberry harvester will be a great helper in picking small berries, speed up the process and make it more comfortable and of high quality.
