Preserving jam's tradition
Artisan jam makers Grant and Carol Paech have been throwing open their farm's gates for 35 strawberry seasons.
This Spring is no different, with the founders of Beerenberg Farm in the Adelaide Hills hoping to welcome even more pickers than they did last year: some 28,000 people.
The family business, which is now also run by Grant and Carol's three children, began the strawberry picking phenomenon at its farm in 1975.
“There’s a real movement of people who want to know where their food
comes from, to have the freshest available produce from local farms and
to get back to basics,” says their daughter Sally Paech, who is also the marketing manager of Beerenberg.
“You can’t get fresher than picking your own food, and that’s part of the reason our strawberry patch has been so immensely popular, not just with locals, but people from around the world."
Last year five tonnes of strawberries were picked.
"The numbers are really quite extraordinary. We’re now at the point where people are bringing their children to the farm because they remember when they used to come here as kids to pick strawberries," says Sally.
Beerenberg farm dates back to 1839, with the Paechs settling at a
property at Paechtown, near Hahndorf. Six generations of the Paech
family have lived and worked on this farm, now known as Beerenberg.
In the early 1970s, Grant Paech made the first batch of strawberry jam
on his kitchen stove. Now Beerenberg produces more than 50 home-style
products using the freshest farm produce, exporting to 24 countries. The
range includes jams, marmalades, chutneys, sauces and marinades,
pickles, dressings, dessert toppings and olive oil.
Strawberry jam is Beerenberg’s most popular product, with the company selling 250,000 jars last year - a quarter of all premium jams sold by them.
Sally says Beerenberg had long been committed to sharing the origins of its products with consumers, through its Provenance Pathway tool which enables people to enter the barcode from a Beerenberg jar to find out where the ingredients were grown, the date the product was made and even the name of the cook.
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