As a young child, I spent many wonderful days visiting my grandmother at her cabin near Carver, Arkansas,” Carla Watkins says, attributing her successful business venture, “Honey Jamz,” to the legacy of her grandmother.
“My Grandma Margie had 10 young children when she was widowed,” Carla says, vividly remembering how hard her grandmother worked to raise them. “She carried water up from the Buffalo River for bathing and cooking, and grew a garden large enough to support them all. And what they didn’t eat fresh, she canned.”
After spending her youth watching how her grandmother picked fruits and berries and transformed the tasty yields into delicious jams and jellies, Carla used this knowledge to form her own business, “Honey Jamz.” Her twin daughters, Chloe and Zethra, assist her in gathering the fruit, just like she did with her grandmother.
While Carla’s goal is to collect fruit at its peak time, that is not always possible. Due to the drought conditions of last year, the blackberry crop failed, and she missed the strawberry crop because it came in too early; however, this year the peach crop was perfect.
“For sweetening, my grandmother made molasses and gathered wild honey from bee hives she discovered in the trees,” Carla says, “so I began experimenting and learned to sweeten my products with honey from my husband’s Buffalo River Honey Company beehives.”
Each variety of her “honey” jam is hand-stirred in small batches to ensure the best quality of flavor and consistency.
“It took me a while to figure out the ratio of using honey instead of sugar to sweeten. I have to cook the jam longer and almost reduce it, which really enhances the flavor,” she says. “Because of seasonal conditions, you can’t standardize the honey or the fruit so each batch is unique. Too much rain or heat—or not enough—greatly influences yields, water content, sweetness, taste, and acidity levels of the fruit.
“For my jars I designed a signature hand-drawn fruit logo. I wanted it to look old-fashioned,” Carla says. “From picking to producing to packaging, my product involves my entire family and encompasses the legacy my grandmother passed along to me.”
Carla first began selling her jams at festivals with her husband and his honey. Both Honey Jamz and Buffalo River Honey Company soon evolved into commercial businesses and are now sold at the retail level and over the internet at buffaloriverhoney.com.
M! FM 2013
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