These berries came from a local contact of ours by way of a family farm in the Fraser Valley. Today I made my first-ever batch of blackberry jam. It’s sort of funny to us in a way as the name we’ve been using for the past few years is JamBusters! but most of the products I’ve been producing at home have been salsas, jellies, marmalades or chutneys.
This year I think it will be safe to say there will be some jams sold under the JamBusters! brand and I couldn’t be happier. With the huge amount of berries I have stored in our freezer – including blueberries delivered anonymously to our door this past summer – I have no shortage of fruit to get a full line of jams together for the start of our vending season.
There is other inventory as well.
The end of our indoor vending season last year saw me produce a lot of salsas and a few of the newer items we’ve introduced in the past year that have proven to be quite popular. Of course, there is a large supply of The Relish Formerly Known As Hellish in storage as it is not only our two-time award winner, it is one of our favourite try-before-you-buy samplers.
We haven’t put a lot of thought into what we will be doing with JamBusters! in the coming year as I’ve been focused mostly on producing new products. We have discussed dropping some events from our schedule and trying some new ones but really have not come up with any concrete plans to date. We will see what happens come spring.
As for our online presence, George says he plans to do a rebuild of the JamBusters! website but there’s no telling when that will happen as he has been quite busy with his freelance work. On top of that he has added some community projects and additional volunteer work to his weekly schedule. He says it’s to keep in contact with people. I think he just likes to be busy.
I have found several new recipes I am hoping to try and am looking at adding more low sugar products to our inventory. We have been asked several times at just about every event we have been a part of this past year for them. I did make a short run of low sugar apricot jam late last season and it sold out so there is definitely a market for that sort of item.
Other than that, I am looking forward to putting more jams into our product line and moving a bit closer to matching our offerings to the JamBusters! name. We will have our usual items as well, but will likely attempt to put more interesting jam combinations together for 2017. That may involve berries and liquors. Mmmm. I think I like that idea!