November 20, 2006—'Tis the season for cornbread, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie, and giant helpings of turkey. But for many, it's not a true Thanksgiving feast without cranberry sauce.

Fresh or canned, the fruit is ready for throngs of grocery shoppers beginning in early fall, when farmers flood their fields, thrash the cranberry vines, and round up the floating berries.

Learn the secrets behind growing and harvesting the fruits with a third-generation cranberry farmer, and visit the tiny town of Cranmoor, Wisconsin—a place whose ditches, dikes, and canals feed the largest inland cranberry fields in the world.