Fellow jam and marmalade-heads! Help! Did you know there's a critical, nationwide canning jar shortage? My usual sources are all out for the indefinite future. I have spent way too much of my life contemplating jam jars. Why? Because I always think there might be a better or cheaper source than the closest Smart & Final store. But no. After shipping and tax and all that, I fall back on my local Santa Barbara or Carpinteria store. But they're out! Indefinitely! Nationwide!

So, NEXT SATURDAY, 9/25/20, when you visit me at the Santa Barbara Downtown Farmer's Market anytime between 8:30am and 1pm, I will offer you a discount on your purchase if you bring back clean, usable, 8-ounce (1/2 pint) Mason jars. (Sadly, due to the jar shortage, we may have a limited amount of jam and marmalade to purchase.) 

Also, do you see the art in the background of this photo above? It's for sale! I'll be sending more info via Instagram. It's a series of oil paintings on 24-inch square wood panels related to the Thomas Fire and Mudslide. I really felt such deep hope watching the hills recover and that's the inspiration for these works. For more specifics and prices, email me at redhencannery @ gmail.com. 

Thank you all! Stay healthy and content and dust off your empty jars and stop by for a visit. We miss you! 

     Thank you, my dearest customers. With your help, we've done it. We've stayed the course. We've made marmalades and jams for nearly seven years. We've transformed.
     And here we are again, in the cold shadow of another looming disaster: Covid-19. We refuse to be afraid. Why? Because the oranges proliferate. The new tree of calamansi fruit (a citrus with orange rind and lime fruit) is exploding. Lemon blossoms are everywhere. The ranch reminds us that life is movement, that even a pandemic virus will pass.
     But we also must listen to the terrifying ripples. In California, we have been on stay-in-place orders for nearly two weeks. We stay six feet away from my dear parents; the isolation has translated into hours of work managing the farm for them. As a result, their garden is stupendous and the avocado, peach, plum and citrus trees look amazing. 
    Transformation: Red Hen Cannery survived fire, flood, economic challenges. Now? Plague. We emerged stronger in the past and hope to again. For now, we are streamlined but quite alive and well. We eliminated wholesale and are only available at our online store here or at the weekly Santa Barbara Farmers Market, which is open for now. 
   Please know that we are holding you, our ever-loving marmalade and jam eaters, in our hearts and wishing you health, strength and hope. Please let us know if we can send some cheer, in jam or marmalade form, to someone you love and miss. I know that I've been sending care packages to friends in Seattle and San Francisco and Colorado right now. It's my way to feel connected in this alone-time. 
     Or if you just want a virtual pen-pal, drop us a line at: [email protected]. A real, live human will get back to you. Thanks for all your support and I promise to be here on the flip side, whenever that may be. 

     So much has happened this past year. After going back and forth on whether or not to close the business, we're moving forward slowly and with renewed purpose and focus. Our work at Red Hen reminds me of this painting I made, above, of a phoenix rising from the ashes. This is a cliche, of course, but for the little Red Hen the cliche is apt.
    A year after the Thomas Fire and 1/9 Mudslide, I've regrouped slightly. We still have no employees but we jumped back into the Farmers Markets here in Santa Barbara. My husband sold the jars and I made the jam and marmalade. Habitat for Humanity helped rebuild our fence, damaged in the 1/9 Mudslide. And most recently I applied for and received a Thomas Fire and Mudslide Recovery Grant from Wells Fargo Banks, through the Women's Economic Ventures nonprofit her in SB County. Our family was also given two gorgeous quilts from the Ventura Modern Quilt Guild that have blanketed our beds and made us feel safe ever since we picked them out last winter. 
     It took us until now to gather our strength and endurance to face making the needed cuts and trims to keep Red Hen alive. Throughout, my customers have been my shining light. They've offered everything from free housecleaning to kind words of support and so much pleading to keep making jam and marmalade. The saddest part has been giving up on my wholesale business and missing the great friends I made through all the local stores and more. But in looking over everything, I realized I had to scale back as a one-person operation and I just couldn't continue with that piece of the pie. 
     For now, I will continue to keep a little bit of seasonal jam and marmalade on stock that I plan to sell throughout the year through the Red Hen online store. And we hope to be back for the holidays, too, at Farmers Markets. As for additional Farmers Markets this spring or summer or adding wholesale back, I can't say for now. But you'll be the first to know, when and if things change!
    Thanks, again, to all of you for your support and I hope that you find your inner phoenix this year, for whatever challenges you face. 
​     

Dear Customers,

It is with great sadness that I announce that Red Hen Cannery will be taking a production pause indefinitely, starting today. What does this mean for you jam and marmalade lovers? I have a limited supply of some of my most popular flavors and will sell them until they run out. For jam, I have: Heirloom Tomato, Roast Peach and Brown Sugar and Strawberry Vanilla. For marmalade, I'm limited to: Irish Whiskey and Orange and Valencia Orange. When these run out, I'm not sure when I'll make more. I'll go to one last Santa Barbara Farmers Market, this Saturday, and have some jars available online. And when it's gone, that's it for now. 

As many of you know, the Thomas Fire and 1/9 Debris Flow had a massive impact on my business. At the same time, these two events have forced me to re-evaluate what is important. I've decided to focus my time and energy on my art and writing. (For more, visit maureenfoley.com).

As well, my 96 year-old grandfather, who is our family's ranching patriarch, died last month. I'm processing his death and figuring out how to best preserve and continue his farming legacy. For now, take a moment to remember and appreciate Lawrence Bailard, farmer all his life who was able to continue our family's agricultural life through the 20th Century and into the 21st. In case you're worried about the farm itself, the land is safe and sound and the prolific fruit trees that provided the produce for this venture are fine, for now. We hope Foley Farms will return to the farmers markets locally, but with a new focus in the future. 

So we all begin anew. This winter, I may re-open Red Hen in some holiday capacity. But I need some time now to regroup. I am and always will be obsessed with jam and marmalade, so please contact me if you need a jam consultant, private jamming lessons, or are interested in the business in some other way: [email protected].

Last, I want to thank you all for your business these last five years. What a culinary journey this has been. I am deeply indebted to all of you for this extraordinary opportunity to learn, make, taste, sell and, best of all, eat delicious jam made from the best fruit Santa Barbara County has to offer. Please keep in touch and let me know if I can help you keep your jam dreams alive.

Jam on it,
​Maureen

     Hello, everyone! I feel like I'm finally emerging from the mud, literally. First off, thanks to all of you who have ordered jam from me in the last few months. Your kind words and support (financial and otherwise) have helped us keep the business afloat. We're still struggling, and we've downsized, but I'm also trying to focus on my artistic life to heal.
     On the artistic front, please see the flier above for the Mud and Fire Community Project. It's an awesome one-day event for locals who want to make art and recover. See more here.
    Last, I managed to send off some marmalade to the annual international Dalemain Marmalade Festival in Cumbria, England, and was blessed with a Silver Roundel for my Hot and Smoky Marmalade flavor. It is ironic that I was already thinking of a smoky flavor (see earlier blog post) before any notion of California's largest forest fire ever began. Now, it's very appropriate. I'll have this flavor on the website soon, but in the meantime you can always order it as a "seasonal flavor" and send me a request for that flavor in the buyer's notes. It features smoked green Lapsang Souchong tea, smoked paprika, smoked chipotle pepper and a smattering of ghost pepper. Hot, yes. Smoky, of course.
       As spring rains sunlight onto our mud, there are oak seedlings poking out of the dried ash debris flow and pollywogs are growing in the creek, among new throngs of boulders. We're getting used to our new landscape, for now, and grateful (for once) to see a break in the rain. Even though the farm always needs water! Enjoy the season and Mother's Day and let me know if I can help with any orders.
    I can't thank you enough for your ongoing kindness, amid the ash and mud.

Dearest Customers,

For those who weren't aware, Carpinteria, California, Red Hen Cannery's location, was in the direct path of the devastating Thomas Fire and recent mudslides. Luckily, the amazing firefighters and emergency personnel kept our farm and family safe, although we are still dealing with massive amounts of mud. We are so grateful to the 8,700 emergency personnel who have worked to keep our community safe, and to the police and firefighters who evacuated us in the dark of night twice in three weeks. As the search continues for victims in Montecito, we send our thoughts, prayers, wishes, hopes, and love to any and all people dealing with this tragedy.

I feel deep empathy for our friends and neighbors who are suffering from this massive disaster's fury. Everyone we know here has experienced some sort of loss, from great to small: loss of home, loss of family, loss of sales, loss of school days, loss of feeling safe. I send this message out now to connect with you, my customers, and to offer you opportunities to understand, connect and to help.

Just to give you a sense of our experience, my daughter was out of school for 5 weeks (including the holiday break) and my business was down one third in the holidays. We've been struggling with every aspect of normal life: childcare, transportation, business, work, finances. That's on top of the overwhelming worry about the next rain storm and possible new mudslide. Also, with the 101 freeway cut off, I have not been able to sell my jams and marmalades at the farmers markets. I'm isolated from all my weekly customers, wholesale and retail. I also am struggling to reach farmers and suppliers for my product. If you'd like to help our business directly, please feel free to place an order from our online store now here. Please note that there may be a slight delay due to mail/sourcing issue.

How else can you help? First, book a trip to Santa Barbara or Carpinteria or reach out to some of our local businesses and nonprofits to buy local products or make a donation. Here are some of my favorites spots:

Hospice of Santa Barbara: Nonprofit organization that is helping with all mental health issues related to disaster deaths and mental health.
Flagstone Pantry: Amazing food!
Blue Sands Inn: Great remodeled retro hotel with fantastic decor and reasonable rates.
Chocolate Maya: Buy your Valentine's Day chocolate now!
Santa Barbara Company: One-stop shopping for everything Santa Barbara.
Lucky Llama: Amazing coffee shop in Carpinteria!
Santa Claus Beach: my favorite spot in the whole world, besides our farm.

The struggle has been so intense that I'm even considering closing my doors, but I'm hoping it won't come to that. Right now, we feel so lucky. We could see flames from our front yard, in Carpinteria's front country. The hills behind our town turned white from ash, instead of snow. The creek bused out on the northside instead of the south, saving our neighborhood from car-sized boulders.  To read more about our family's ordeal during the fire,  see the coverage on ABC Nightly News.

For now, thanks for your support of our Red Hen products and jams and marmalades. Your kindness has been what's kept me going until now. Even if you don't need more jam now, a kind word would go a long ways. Feel free to reach out at: [email protected]. It's always great to hear from you! I've also attached some photos from the farm below so you can see what we've been going through. They're from the mudslide because the fire didn't really translate into photos very well.

Take care,
Maureen

You guessed it! It's time to gear up for the Dalemain Marmalade Competition in Cumbria, England. Over the years, I've won Silver, Brozne and Gold Roundels for various flavors, including Irish Whiskey and Orange and more. This year, I was imagining perhaps a smoky flavor marmalade that could work well as a condiment? Thoughts? I could go down the path of a smoke-infused alcohol or in other directions. Spices? Ideas? Inspiration? I like to have a vision in my head of the flavor or idea I'm trying to evoke before I start tinkering with flavors. 

Then, I'll perfect the recipe, try it out on my holiday customers and then ship a box of  it along to the UK close to Valentine's Day, when they hold the festival and marmalade tasting and awards in the Lake District. Maybe this year Santa will bring me a ticket to London so I can attend the festival in person! 

Send any marmalade ideas along or pass them on at the Santa Barbara farmers markets where I'm selling. Any ideas are gratefully appreciated! 

    Figs are a mysterious harvest. They sneak onto the farm, earlier than we expect each year, in August, just as summer is still broiling us all. But then, they linger, those figs. Sometimes for weeks, sometimes months. Anyone who has a fig tree knows that the harvest can be monumental. Here on the farm, we only have three fig trees. But from those few trees I can produce jars and jars of Fig + Chocolate Jam, if the stars align.

      On January 20, James and I headed to San Francisco to receive a winning medal for Red Hen Cannery's Good Food Award. We drove through torrential rain, from the farm to San Francisco, passing through spilling creeks and ignoring flash food warnings from the National Weather Service, all with a car packed with jars of winning jam. We made it just in time and were treated to an amazing evening filled with inspiration from food and Native American rights activist, Winona La Duke, and California Seasonal Food Movement pioneer, Alice Waters.
      This is what the Good Food organization people wrote about the event: "The winners harken from 36 states and 141 cities, having risen to the top amongst 2,095 entries in a Blind Tasting with 250 judges held in September. The highest scoring entries were submitted to a rigorous vetting process to verify they met the sustainability and social responsibility criteria to win a Good Food Awards – with over three dozen ultimately disqualified. This year’s winners represent the forefront of American craft food and drink, making products that are delicious, respectful of the environment, and connected to communities and cultural traditions."
     Hooray for The Red Hen and thanks to all of you for your kindness, inspiration, flavor ideas, feedback and business over the years. Thanks, as well, to my amazing family and especially my grandfather, Lawrence Bailard, for planting and maintaining such amazing fruit and citrus and for allowing me to make my jam from it.

     I don't want to take too long to say, quickly, thanks to the dude from Orange County who bought my marmalade to use for his special marmalade burgers and who shared the general idea behind the recipe. (Random marmalade customer: if you're reading this please send me your name so I can thank you and re-name the sliders in your honor!) He bought the marmalade at Tuesday market in Santa Barbara and by Friday, feeling completely uninspired by our fridge offerings, I found the ground beef sitting sadly in the meat drawer and made a commitment to elevate my mood, through sliders. I bought the bacon and goat cheese and arugula at Trader Joe's and improvised the rest from what we already had. Voila! Dinner with a smile. My husband and I inhaled them, although my daughter (weirdly) claimed they were too spicy. Perhaps the garlic in the mayo sauce? Who cares. She ate the burger plain and the fruit and veggie "rainbow" I arranged for her (again leftover in the fridge) and we all munched happily. This should happen more often.
     Last, I need to offer a massive thanks to my husband, too, for making dinner 99 percent of the evenings. His everyday enthusiasm allows me to indulge these Friday-night quirky moments of inspiration for meals and to focus all my chef energies into jam and marmalade. What a rock star.