This week, I’ve been researching options for producing jams commercially. If I want to sell jam at a reasonable price, I can’t keep buying my sugar at Whole Foods and my jars at the local Ace hardware store — I need to go wholesale. After much google-searching, I found a nearby jar company and a nearby bulk organic sugar company — both are in Lancaster, PA so I imagine I’ll be making a trip up to Amish country soon so that I can save on shipping.

By “cold-emailing” a dozen local food producers, I also found a local commercial kitchen whose owner enjoys incubating new food entrepreneurs. I’m going to do a test-run in a few weeks to see how much jam I can produce per hour.

Finally, I read a fabulous and inspiring (and perhaps the only?) jam memoir by a woman who owned a local jam business on Cape Cod (my “home”-Cape!). It has a few recipes, explains some of the ways she scaled up production, and, best of all, shares her reflections on the seasons of and reasons for preserving local fruits.