One summer several years ago, Ashley Savoy and her family found themselves in possession of more blackberries than they could handle. It’s a problem familiar to local folks lucky enough to live on acreage with established plants. Savoy’s parents had recently moved to Ethel, Louisiana, and their land had yielded a bumper crop of sweet, juicy blackberries.
Savoy started canning. She had learned the craft from her grandmother, and it was the perfect way to prevent the berries from going to waste. She found the soulful, deliberate process to be a soothing pursuit, and it unwittingly planted a seed in her heart.
In 2006, Savoy, a local photographer and coffee shop manager, launched her own jammery and began selling jams and jellies on the artisan website Etsy. She named the project Grinning Jupiter after her dog, a Catahoula Cur named Jupiter who had a habit of “grinning” when one of Savoy’s friends came over. Today, the jammery is her full-time job.
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When it comes to commercial foods, few fields are as crowded as jarred preserves. But Grinning Jupiter stands out because of Savoy’s hunt for local fruits, which she sources from family land, trusted growers and the wild.
“I try to pick as much wild fruit as I can,” she says. “It’s so much healthier and has no pesticides.”
Friends and family members who own property or visit public lands across the region serve as scouts, reporting to Savoy when muscadines, figs, mayhaws, blackberries and other fruits are at the peak of ripeness. Family fig trees, for example, usually net 30 gallons of fresh fruit if she can outpace the birds. This month, she’ll be picking muscadines from a piece of property owned by her in-laws near the Homochitto National Forest in Mississippi.
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“If you’ve ever had a real muscadine, you’ll never go back to grapes,” she says. “It’s a wild grape, and it makes incredible jelly.”
Savoy’s jams, jellies and preserves are made by hand and in small batches. The color of the signature patterned fabric draping the lid usually matchess the fruit inside the jar.
Etsy is still a big source of sales, but Savoy now also sells her wares through various local retailers, including Alexander’s Highland Market, IndiePlate and Red Stick Spice Company. facebook.com/grinningjupiter