As Butch Gardner hauls cranberries between two cold storage facilities on the Badger State Fruit Processing property in Pittsville, Wis., he gives the “thumbs-up” to plant manager Mark Konrardy for a job well done. Konrardy met three tough challenges for the construction of a new cold storage facility, which was built to house Badger’s 200 million pounds of cranberries with room to grow.
Gardner, owner of Badger State Fruit Processing, is getting ready for the new cranberry harvest, which happens in just a few short weeks. Badger State’s 200 million pounds of cranberries represents about 45 percent of Wisconsin’s enormous crop. With Wisconsin’s claim to the largest cranberry-producing state in the union, that’s no small potatoes. According to Gardner, Wisconsin harvests about 52 percent of the world’s cranberries.