31 Annejam

The story as told went something like this.

Years ago, when she could get the fruit, Anne occasionally made a batch of raspberry jam exactly like her mother did. The relatives loved her jam, the neighbours were occasionally treated to a jar and everyone was happy. Then one of her lawyer friends called Charlotta suggested she should sell her jam instead of giving it all away and call it AnneJam. This caused some rethinking: How to make more than a few jars and have no failures, how to grow enough of our own fruit but not so much so that the whole thing became really hard work.

But first we had to work out why Anne’s jam batches weren’t always the same. How did Grandma do it? Anne said Grandma just followed the recipe. Grandma’s recipe headed ‘Raspberry Jam’ was in a tattered book called Cookery Book; South Australian School of Mines (and Industries).

It said concisely: Allow 1 lb. sugar to each pound of fruit. Wash fruit, place in preserving pan with the sugar, bring slowly to the boil and boil quickly until it gels.

There were crossings out and scribbled replacements in faded biro. The 1 lb became ¾ lb. Wash fruit was crossed out, with crossed out and replaced with boil then add. The word slowly was removed and ½ hour added after boil quickly.
These seemed to be fairly significant modifications and not really following the recipe. I looked at other recipes in the book and they too were rewritten.

This was a little bit wrong but near enough to the truth of the birth of AnneJam. The reality was that we had to come to grips with lots of old wives tales about jam-making so we could make reasonably consistent jams across seasons from our range of raspberries, and the boysenberries, blackberries, and blackcurrants that had joined them by the third season.

Remarkably, people did seem to want to buy our jam but she wasn’t sure. There is a big gap between giving away and selling. Giving away carries no responsibility. No fault for the dead insects in the mix, no fault for the chip in the lip of the jar, no fault for the furry growth on the jam surface. Even knowing these possibilities you can feel a warm glow when giving it away. Recipients can always dump the product and not tell you or even pass the burden on to someone else.

As a newly-fledged lawyer she worried endlessly about selling jam. It would only be worth a few dollars but if someone died from eating the product, and we were sued, we would lose everything we had and more. Was it worth the hassle? I reminded her of the business plan and that we were recognised primary producers with little produce. The Taxman might be worse than her suers.

We started with the gullible, weak and defenceless sector of the population, namely the old. It seemed our jam teleported them to long-forgotten scents and tastes of their youth.

Remembered stories wafted from the jam spooned onto freshly-baked scones; go on have some cream, you only live once. After a year of delivering to old people’s homes and selling by word of mouth someone commented that we were losing quite a few of our clients through death. No links were intended.