Most of Massachusetts’s bogs are open to the public. Annie Walker is more than happy to show you around hers.

She offers daily tours, likes to personally demonstrate how her bog works and is very proud of this very productive and historic place: it is the birthplace of the cultivated cranberry.

For a month from Columbus Day in October, ‘Annies Crannies’ farm in Dennis, Barnstaple County, becomes part of the popular Cranberry Bog Trail.

Massachusetts has more than 400 cranberry farms.Massachusetts has more than 400 cranberry farms.

Massachusetts boasts more than 400 cranberry farms, mostly south of Boston in Plymouth County or on Cape Cod and produces about two million barrels per year.

Forty thousand acres are under cultivation in the state that vies with Wisconsin for bragging rights as the centre of bog tourism and world cranberry domination – and with Christmas coming up, there is high demand for the popular fruity condiment to accompany turkey dinners.

In the southeast of the state, cranberries are the premier commercial crop and you have the pick of bogs for your safari.

You’ll be hard pressed not to find yourself in a farmer’s ‘bed’ – and even enjoying some really juicy bits.

“She starts white or a pale yellow and goes red. The Cranberry Growers Association credo is ‘dry pick fresh, wet pick for juice and cans’. This is the world superfruit. No turkey should be without it!”

You can tell a cranberry from a huckleberry because of its woodier stems and bell flowers. Early settlers thought the trailing vine’s blossom looked like a crane.

Canadians call them “mossberries” and native Americans know them as “Sassamanah”.

They used the red berries to treat their arrow wounds and to dye blankets and rugs.

Members of the Pequot tribe ate “pemmican” – crushed ibimi cranberry with deer meat. Sometimes they are called “bearberries” as the specialities on the ursine menu.

A couple from Pennsylvania has just got engaged in one of the bogs. He even went down on one knee

Rather than go into all the stuff about elevated levels of phytonutrients, vital manganese and other essential micronutrients, the polyphenols, the anti-clotting propensities and the nutraceutical products that help fight everything from ulcers and tooth decay to urinary tract infections, your guide just says cranberries are good for you and that 330ml of juice a day should keep the proctologist at bay.

Annie is a former Broadway wardrobe assistant supervisor whose grandfather bought the farm in 1911 from the Hall family, the pioneers of the cranberry phenomenon.

‘Molly’s Pasture’ is where it all probably started in 1816 when a farmer, after cutting down trees, saw how his crop thrived after sand was blown over it by a storm.

It is where early equipment was invented and trialled.

The industry is now worth an annual $2.2 billion.

Long Beach in Washington State has a Cranberry Museum and Research Foundation and Warrens, Wisconsin, has a Cranberry Discovery Centre.

Back in Massachusetts (“by the big hills”) you are spoilt for choice for a decent bog.

Andrea and Leo operate the organic Cape Farm in Harwich. To minimize foot traffic they use an eight-seater golf cart that takes you past staff and family members indulging in some cameo wading and raking.

On the 90-minute, $15 agri-tour, you are told all about bed wetting; how flooding protects the root zone, leaf texture and terminal buds; and how the floating berries are coralled by booms. There’s not too much on integrated pest management.

On board you meet fellow “crannie” fans and cranberry muffin bakers and jelly makers, all eager to swap their recipes for “Granny never fails” sauce.

Here, like elsewhere, you might you learn that the Ocean Spray Collective was founded in 1930, has 300 members and is based in Lakeville.

You would also be taught that one acre of bog can produce 15,000 pounds of berries and that cranberries were used to decorate Christmas trees because they were slow to spoil. You may also get to try the local “craisins”.

The old cranberry plantation town of Edaville in the heart of Cranberry Country stages the annual National Cranberry Festival. There is a fun fair and, for the thrill-seekers, adventurous visitors can ride on the Flying Cranberry Crates.

The 2,000-acre AD Makepeace and Co site in Wareham offers educational tours, as does McCaffrey’s Spring Rain Farm in East Taunton and the 100-year-old, family-run, family-friendly Flax Pond Farm in Carver.

Mayflower Cranberries in Plympton offers a real hands-on, waders-on, water-up-to-the-hip experience in its still-active Screen House and Brown Swamp bogs, which go back to the 1890s.

The two-hour, $50 Cranberry Experience is sold out well in advance.

Owner Jeff LaFleur claims it’s the only place where a man can propose to his intended while in bed wearing waders.

A couple from Pennsylvania has just got engaged in one of his bogs. He even went down on one knee.

On site you can watch the water reelers and “egg beaters” at work, churning up the bogs and coralling up the floating Stevens, Howes and Early Blacks berries, available at $3 for 19oz.

In the bogside barn gift shop at Annies Crannies you can feel old comb scoopers and buy jars of jams and marmalade and fresh cranberries presented in knotted pine gift boxes.

Otherwise, pick up some bogside bees’ kiss spun honey and invest in authentic Yankee scented candles – and enjoy all the smells you’d expect to come from a well-looked-after bog.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.