We do everything
by hand. We're one step ahead of Grandma.
--Craig Daufel
You can find
Glenmore Farms jelly at the following businesses:
Made in Oregon
(various locations)
Strawberry, marionberry, black raspberry, red raspberry,
boysenberry
$2.75-$2.95
Sheridan Fruit
Company
(408 SE 3rd Ave.)
Red raspberry,
black raspberry, boysenberry, orange marmalade, apricot
pineapple, strawberry rhubarb, marionberry, strawberry
$3.09-$3.29
Strohecker's
(2855 SW Patton Road)
Huckleberry,
red raspberry, black raspberry, apricot pineapple, strawberry
rhubarb, marionberry, strawberry, boysenberry
$2.79-$5.69
Zupan's
(various locations)
Apricot
pineapple, boysenberry, huckleberry, strawberry, red raspberry,
boysenberry, marionberry
$3.09-$5.69
I phoned Craig Daufel out of the blue and told him that
I am never without his jams. It was like a declaration of
love. He makes some of the best jam I know, under the label
Glenmore Farms in Canby. I pass many mornings in its company.
I give it away to everyone. I even bring it to France. I'm
proud to show the French a flavor of Oregon. The jams taste
just like the berries they are made from--boysen, marion,
red and black raspberry and the mythic huckleberry. They
are Oregon in a jar.
Glenmore's raspberry has an eye-opening, just-picked taste.
Jams with marions or boysens have a lively degree of perfect
acidity. It's comforting with a buttered piece of toast.
Huckleberries are unique, like the forest surrounding us.
They offer a woodsy, delicate sweetness that says: This
is who we are.
If you ask him about it, Daufel says simply that he's in
the "jelly business." His jams taste of fruit because basically
that's all they are. Big commercial jam makers extend their
jam with sweeteners and their profit with things that dilute
the fruit.
Asked how he makes his jam, Daufel spins a tale mixing
history, berries and place. He tells of how he owes his
very existence to his great-grandmother's berry pies and
to a chief of the Nez Perce tribe. When his great-grandmother
made those pies, Daufel says, "she would always leave some
out along the fence, and the Indians were free to take them."
One time, her small son wandered away. He was missing for
a couple of days, and everyone was worried. The Nez Perce
chief found the boy and knew his mother because of her pies.
The kid he brought home was Daufel's grandfather. "So if
it wasn't for the native people," Daufel says, "I wouldn't
have been born."
Then Daufel starts to explain how he learned to make jam.
His story takes you back. Daufel's great-grandfather came
from England to Boston and eventually ended up with a land
grant in Tualatin about 1848. His father and mother first
started the jelly business and bought berries direct. Daufel
started picking strawberries when he was 5 years old. It
was a form of babysitting to have children pick berries.
You knew where they were, who they were with and what they
were doing. Clearly he
didn't suffer under it.
These days, Daufel's kitchens are located at the back end
of a berry-packing house, close to the source of local fruit.
To make its jam, Glenmore Farms uses fruit, sugar, pectin
and "a bit" of citric acid, to get the right balance of
acidity.
"We do everything by hand," Daufel says. "We're one step
ahead of Grandma." Most jam on the market is made from juice,
fructose, corn syrup and sugar. "You'll notice that there
are three sugars, and no fruit," he points out. Daufel works
like a chef, making only 36 jars at a time. His open steam
kettles supply good, rapid, even heating. "We just know
when it's done," he says. "My father would see the sheen
and know the jam was where it should be."
He slips into the wealth of oral history he's collected
by living his whole life in this one place, between Tualatin
and Canby. "The pioneers brought the berries here," he says.
"Coming to the Willamette Valley was a tale of a Garden
of Eden." He wonders what it must have been like for the
people who first saw the west side of the Blue Mountains
and found that hard soil you couldn't put a plow into. "They
didn't know that Eden was much further to the west. They
must have doubted their decision to come so far.
"When they came, they had their priorities," Daufel says.
They came with seeds for planting. They had to put food
in the ground at once. They also had to build their cabins.
The seeds they brought for apples or pears required a wait
of nine or 10 years before they began producing food. They
brought berries because it gave them an almost immediate
source of food.
The evergreen berries were brought by the settlers because
they could pack them up and keep them alive by wrapping
the root ball in wet burlap. Black caps, he says, are native.
The Oregon State ag school developed marions from a cross
with the Ollallie, which is the native word for blackberry.
And on and on Daufel goes, citing the history of every berry
he uses.
And while Daufel knows about the whole world of berries,
he doesn't need to see his jam in every cupboard. He sells
his jams at local stores, at fruit stands and by word of
mouth. He doesn't intend to extend the brand or expand into
other markets.
"I don't ever want to be big," he says. "I just want enough
to earn a living."
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 19,
2000
|
