Decas Cranberry Products has added Julienne Cranberry-Orange Cooking and Baking Cranberries to its line of Paradise Meadow Cooking and Baking products. The product will be available starting in September.

President and CEO, Michael McManama, talks all about the cranberry industry and the past, present and future of Decas Cranberry Products, Inc.

Each autumn, cranberry bogs across the South Shore turn a vibrant crimson, ushering in the annual harvest season. The tart little berries are native to New England. The earliest record of cranberry cultivation dates to 1816 when a man named Captain Henry Hall, of Dennis, noticed that the wild cranberries in his bogs grew better when sand blew over them. Captain Hall began transplanting his cranberry vines, fencing them in and spreading sand on them. This year marks the 200th anniversary of cranberry farming in Massachusetts.

Decas Cranberry Products Inc., which has been in business for more than 80 years, spent much of its history involved heavily in the “ingredient” portion of the business.

Celebrating 200 years of growing cranberries in Massachusetts. At the A.D. Makepeace bogs in Carver visitors got a chance to help harvest the crimson red berries on Monday, September 26, 2016.

There’s a reason cranberry sauce has been gracing Thanksgiving tables for so long. Cranberries have a rich history in the Bay State, dating beyond even the days of the Pilgrims. Native Americans prized the tangy, tart berry for its medicinal qualities and basic sustenance. Now, cranberry bogs in Massachusetts account for 30 percent of the global cranberry acreage and nearly 7,000 jobs locally. So it’s only fitting that there’s an entire weekend devoted to the celebration of Massachusetts’ state berry.

Massachusetts is the one of the country's largest commercial cranberry producers with more than 14,000 acres of working bogs, many of those on the Southeast Coast. And fall is one of the best times to explore this Cranberry Country. We’ll meet a second generation grower bringing innovation to the industry, drop in on a Wareham bed and breakfast with an interesting tie to Channel 5, and check out some local theatre. Plus, we visit the state’s only archeology museum, home to artifacts that go back 12,000 years. And we shop a country store that sold for 25 dollars in 1828, and is still run by the same family generations later.