When Eryn March says her jams, jellies and preserves are handcrafted, she means everything she sells at Squirrel Brand Preserved Goods is made by hand — her hands.
Her motto is “putting away food for later,” and the whimsical business name is an homage to the nickname she gave her baby daughter and to industrious squirrels who also put away food for later.
March is a full-time graphic designer who started putting up little jars of jams and pickles for an office gift exchange. “I love to cook and I am self-taught when it comes to making jams and pickles. When I would give the jars away, my colleagues would fight over them. They, along with my friends and family, were the ones who convinced me I should sell what I was making,” March said in a telephone interview.
Credit: Joann Vitelli
Credit: Joann Vitelli
She perfected pickled okra, bread-and-butter pickles, riesling jelly, milk jam and strawberry balsamic preserves with black pepper, trying any combination that sounded good to her.
A neighbor in Castleberry Hill was starting a farmers market, and he invited her to have a table there. She put out the jars to see if anybody would buy them. And people did.
That was 2015. The next year, she took courses at the University of Georgia on starting a business and food safety, and by 2017, she was selling at the Grant Park Farmers Market. That is still her only retail outlet, and she is a vendor at the market the first Sunday of each month. She also sells her products online.
“Selling jam and selling pickles require two different licenses, so I decided to focus on jam. I make my jams and preserves in the old-fashioned European style from my own recipes but inspired by French pastry chef Christine Ferber.”
Credit: Joann Vitelli
Credit: Joann Vitelli
It’s a time-consuming process. Sixteen pounds of strawberries will generally produce two dozen 8-ounce jars of jam. She cuts up the fruit, adds the right ratio of sugar and lemon juice for the weight of the berries, refrigerates the mixture overnight or longer, then strains out the fruit, cooks down the juice and adds the fruit back. That keeps the fruit pieces from burning while the juice heats to the right temperature to set.
March said her customers tell her that the care and the time she takes mean her products are much richer in flavor than jams that could be made faster with pectin.
Her products are seasonal, starting with five or six flavors in the spring and adding more as the season goes on. Pepper jelly is available year-round, and when her farmers market season starts, she will have orange rosemary jelly and pear with elderflower liqueur and thyme, both made with herbs from her garden. Strawberry comes next, and when honeysuckle starts blooming, she forages blossoms for her wild honeysuckle jelly.
Credit: Joann Vitelli
Credit: Joann Vitelli
She says what keeps her at this work is that her customers tell her how good it is. “My boss will sit in his office and just eat it by the spoonful. People who love it really love it. I have customers who tell me they come to the Grant Park market specifically for me.”
Aside from eating preserves by the spoonful, she can dream up lots of ways to enjoy her products. “I can imagine a turkey sandwich with jalapeno peach preserves made with pain au levain from TGM (Bread). Maybe toasted brioche slathered with strawberry preserves and shingled with prosciutto, then topped with goat cheese, baby arugula and some freshly ground black pepper. Or on a cheese board alongside meats and cheeses from fellow Grant Park market vendor Spotted Trotter.”
March’s favorite? Her foraged mulberry jelly stirred into plant-based yogurt.
Like many businesses, Squirrel Brand Preserved Goods struggled during the pandemic but March kept going. “It’s the people who come back and seek me out because they love what I make so much that inspired me to continue. I am very grateful for that because, truthfully, at the beginning, I was never certain anyone would buy it.”
Squirrel Brand Preserved Goods, squirrelbrandgoods.com.
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