Sugar-Free Preserves

Where are you located?

Our farm is located in Glenville, Nova Scotia. It’s a little hamlet between Mabou and Inverness on the island of Cape Breton.

My Jam looks separated, what do I do?

Our sugar-free jams are natural products. Because we are sugar-free and use all-natural products, from time to time ‘fruit float’ can happen to fruit like strawberry or rhubarb during the canning process leaving pulp at the top and jelly on the bottom. If this occurred with your jam, don’t worry, it’s just as delicious as all our other jams. When this happens, we encourage our customers to dig in and mix it up!!!

What does it mean you’re sold out for the season?

We are a farm-to-table business, where we believe strongly in growing a large proportion of what we make. Sometimes, if there are other local growers that have supplies beyond our own, we may top-up our fruit or berry inventory (this is especially true with Blueberries as our bushes are young and our neighbour has acres of stunning wild blueberries!). However, for the most part, we grow what we make and when we run out, that’s it until next year. Every year our capacity grows so we hope to run out a little later each year.

I just bought from you at a market, will those items be on your website?

For the most part, yes, but not yet, or soon. If you are reading this and we are still in a growing season, I usually am so busy farming, making, and selling at my local farmer’s markets that I don’t have a chance to update my website. However, once the farmers markets at the end of Thanksgiving Weekend (That’s the second weekend of October here in Canada), I usually put aside time to update the website with all the current products. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, I post when that happens.

Why don’t you use the same sweetener in all your products?

Sometimes I feel that by producing sugar-free goods, you have to be part magician, chemist, and explorer. There are so many sugar-free sweeteners out there and not one of them behaves exactly like sugar. Each of them has its positive and negative qualities depending on the application. For instance, I use a lot of allulose, not never in meringue, because it loves water too much, so you could back that meringue for hours and it would still be sticky.

Are there sweeteners you don’t use in your products?

Yes, there are a few. I don’t use artificial sweeteners at all. Next, I’m not a fan of stevia because of the after taste so I don’t use that either. Also, I don’t use xylitol as it’s toxic to dogs. I love dogs and have an adorable retired racing greyhound myself who is an expert at catching what falls on the floor before anyone can get to it first — he’s that fast. As such, if I wouldn’t have any food with xylitol in my house, just in case it could fall on the floor and could be consumed by my super-fast houndie, I won’t put in my products just in case for your puppies too. Finally, I don’t use products like maltitol or mannitol, as they are notorious for upsetting the stomach.