“It’s not real cranberry sauce unless it’s shaped like a can!” photo and caption by Joe Shlabotnick via Flickr Creative Commons license

28 November 2025

Do you have cranberry sauce left over today? When I was growing up we had sauce-shaped-like-a-can and it was always leftover. Half the family was polite about eating it on Thanksgiving but would not eat it later.

It doesn’t have to look like a can. This sauce gives a hint of where it came from.

Cranberry sauce (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

In the wild, cranberries (Vaccinium oxycoccos) grow in bogs, scattered among other plants such as sphagnum moss.

Cranberries at Christner Bog, Mt Davis, 14 Oct 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)

Commercial cranberry growers plant them in a monoculture …

Cranberries growing (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

… inside diked areas that can be kept moist and flooded later.

Dry cranberry bog in Massachusetts (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

At harvest time they shake the plants and flood the field. The cranberries float.

My sister-in-law describes how the floating cranberries are gathered, October 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)

Harvesters use booms to gather them in.

Cranberry harvest in New Jersey (photo from Wikimedia Commons)

Transferred from truck to truck and then to market.

Cranberry harvest at Cape Cod: the berries are lifted into the truck on the left (photo by Rick St. John)

And that’s how they get from bog to table.

A cranberry at Christner Bog, Mt Davis, 14 Oct 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)