Cucumber Massacre at Rogue Farms Jeopardizes Spruce Gin
Gourd fatalities now estimated at 158 in an incident at our farm in Independence, Ore. last month.
A runaway irrigation tractor plowed into our cucumber garden on Friday, July 14, trampling 158 cucumbers that were nearly ready for harvest. The episode has been ruled an accident and the driver is cooperating with authorities.
Photos of the incident were unavailable but we were able to recreate it with this dramatic reenactment.
One acre of cucumbers grows in the fields of Rogue Farms each year. Harvest began July 18, just four short days after the event and every one of those cucumbers was due to be picked and packed on a truck to Rogue Spirits Distillery in Newport, Ore., just 77 miles away.
Once at the distillery, Rogue’s Level 10 Spirits Wizard, Jake Holshue would have hand peeled them. The cucumbers, along with eleven other ingredients, including Oregon spruce, juniper berries and free-range coastal water, are distilled into Rogue Spirits Spruce Gin.
A single cucumber is responsible for up to six bottles of Spruce Gin. Which means this loss is not just about cucumbers but it’s also about gin. We’ll have 948 fewer bottles of Spruce Gin this year.
796 cucumbers survived the event and will be transported to the coast as soon as they are healthy enough to do so. 243 of them already arrived in Newport, Ore. on August 1 and will be part of the next batch of Spruce Gin.
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