Success is sweet for jam makers of Saffron Acres

Gemma Peplow lends a hand at an award-winning community scheme which is helping special needs learners to develop new skills

Hands stained a deep pinky-purple, the hard-working producers behind the Saffron Acres jam and chutneys label set to work on a big bowl of grown-in-Leicester berries. Stacked on a row of shelves behind them are crates of the finished product; the “here’s lots we made earlier” selection of neatly-stacked, carefully-labelled, delicious-looking preserves.

This is what happens every Thursday at the former Southfields Drive Community Centre. Thursdays are a hive of activity.

This week, they’re working on worcesterberries (a gooseberry/blackcurrant-cross), which will be mixed with strawberries to create a new jam on the block.

The project is run by Saffron Acres, a community food and environmental scheme which encompasses, among other things, a six-acre allotment near Aylestone Leisure Centre and the in-development six-acre Saffron Heath community green space.

Run in partnership with Leicester College’s Learning For Living course, it gives students with learning disabilities the chance to make, package and sell their own preserves, while making use of surplus fruit and veg from the allotment.
Set up in 2012, the jams proved so popular that the Co-op placed an order for thousands of jars. Now, the aim is to concentrate on farmers’ markets and, in future, delis and cafes, to keep production at a sustainable rate.

Student Hayley, 25, who is shy at first but soon opens up – “I know you don’t believe I’m 25, I don’t look it, but I am!” she jokes – has been attending each week since the start of term.

“I enjoy making jam, I enjoy being with friends – I’ve made lots of friends – and I like selling the jam as well,” she says. “We’ve sold it at markets and customers were trying it and saying it was nice, which was brilliant. That makes me feel really happy.

“My favourite bit is the cleaning.”

Cleaning? Surely not?

“You’ve got to, haven’t you? You’ve got to have a clean kitchen. And,” she pauses, eyeing up my loose hair, “you’ve got to tie your hair back. And you’re not allowed to wear nail varnish.”

Phew. I’m okay on that front, at least.

Saffron Acres project manager Sarah Field shows me round. “I do lots of different things, but this is my Thursday job,” she says. “We take the produce, bring it here and work with the guys from the college to make lots of different jams and chutneys. We then sell them at community events and farmers’ markets to contribute towards the running costs.”

The seed for the project was planted during a conversation about marrows with pal Angela Belfield, a lecturer in supported learning at Leicester College.

“I was bemoaning having so many marrows and not knowing what to do with them all,” said Sarah.

“Angela said we could give them to the college so they could make chutneys.”

And so it began. Very quickly, the Co-op came knocking, leading to the group winning several awards for their work.

“The deal with the Co-op went from a casual conversation to them all of a sudden placing an order,” says Sarah. “It was huge. For us, as a small community project, to get that kind of backing and publicity was unheard of.

“It was brilliant, but supplying a retailer like that is a huge thing. We want something that’s truly sustainable, so it’s better to work up gradually.”

Sarah and Angela now run the weekly sessions with the help of college inclusion workers Susan Arnull and Rose Barry.

“We usually have nine learners here each week,” says Sarah. “We have to unload the fruit and veg and then wash, maybe peel and chop. We freeze a lot, especially for this time of year as obviously there’s not a lot coming off the allotment at the moment.

“We’ll have two teams: one doing the prep, the other producing in the kitchen.

“So they have to prepare and cook the fruit, add sugar, add any other ingredients that might be needed. When it gets to setting point, that’s when it stops being a lumpy fruit sauce and turns to jam you can spread.

“It’s all about heating and a chemical reaction as well; depending on the different fruit or veg you’re using you might need different ingredients to facilitate that chemical reaction…” Sarah laughs. “We’ve become jam-making experts.”

Once the jam or chutney has reached setting point, it’s then left to cool.

“It’s usually made one week, labelled the next week. Learners are involved in washing jars – making sure there’s no big splodges of jam down the side – and putting labels on.

“We package them up, into boxes, and then at some point they’ll go in the back of the car and we’ll take them to be sold. The only thing the students are not involved in is putting the product in the jars as it’s so hot and can be quite dangerous. But that’s it.”

Once packaged and labelled, the jams are taken to farmers’ markets, where they’re sold for about £2.50 a jar, or three for £6.

“We treat it as a day out,” says Sarah. “They had the festive farmers’ market in the city centre running up to Christmas and that was our best-ever day for takings.

“There, the students are learning how to interact with customers and are also handling cash.

“They’re so proud of the product, so it’s important they see the end part of the process and see people enjoying it.” In stock at the minute, they’ve got flavours including sweet allotment pickle, plum chutney, damson jam, quince paste and rhubarb and ginger jam.

It’s all driven solely by the fruit and veg coming from the allotments, says Sarah.

“For us, it’s important to have that link. Once we’ve run out of pumpkin for pumpkin chutney, that’s it. We will freeze stuff, but we never buy in. We make in small batches; max is about 160 jars in a day. So it’s limited edition, if you like.”
Down at the allotment, while they grow the staples, they’re always looking for interesting and unusual fruit and veg to throw into the mix.

“We try and grow a lot of exotic produce, to reflect Leicester’s diversity. We’ve obviously got worcesterberries today; we’ve grown ochra before, and shark fin melon. It looks like a watermelon and is used as a shark fin-substitute for shark fin soup.” Sarah laughs. “It’s not nice. We probably won’t have that again.”

We grow tomatillos as well; all sorts of different things.”

It costs roughly £85,000 a year to run all the Saffron Acres food and environmental projects, says Sarah. At the minute, the jam project is breaking even, but the aim is for it to eventually make a profit and help contribute.

So how do they raise the cash?

“It’s a blend of funding,” says Sarah. “The core work on the allotments is funded by the Big Lottery Fund; we’re just about to enter our last year of a five-year programme of funding from them. We also currently have funding through Biffa Award for Saffron Heath.

“We’re going to reapply for lottery funding; that process will probably start this summer. We’re trying to develop income from projects that aren’t grant-reliant and developing relationships with other organisations that might be useful in the future.”

It’s such an important project for the students, says Sarah. They gain a lot from it.

In the two hours I spend there, it’s obvious how true this is.

“We see a real change in the students as they spend more time here. They have a tremendous amount of pride in their work and gain a huge amount of confidence.

“And that doesn’t just come from the work skills they gain here, but also from knowing that people have confidence in them. It’s about saying: ‘Yes, I trust you, I’m happy for you to do that yourself’; something most of us take for granted.

“It’s great to see how passionate they are about it. The ideal would be to run more days a week so we could turn it into work; they could come here after finishing college.

“In the current climate, I don’t know how realistic that is, but it’s certainly a dream that we have. If you talk to the students, most will say how much they want to get a job. And they’d love to do this for work. They work hard but we also have a laugh and a good chat. It’s a great team.”

Student Claire, 27, says the project has helped her develop her cooking skills.

“It all comes from the allotment, which is good,” she says. “I like it when people taste the jam and then want to buy it. I like making the jam and I like cooking at home, too.”

Suleman, 22, also known as the project’s “chief salesman”, says: “My favourite bit is the cooking. Seeing people like it as well, that’s brilliant. It makes you feel really happy.”

Angela says the project is now a big part of the Learning For Living course.

“Effectively, what we’re teaching here is catering, it’s also basically literacy, numeracy, communication skills; it’s helping the students to become independent. It’s all skills they can bring to a job.

“With the jam, they get to see the results of their hard work. To see it on the shelves of the Co-op and at farmers’ markets is tremendous. They understand then why it’s worth going to work.”

With that, it’s time to get down to the task at hand. A chorus of goodbyes and a show of pinky-purple waves see me out the door.

After all, the students can’t spend all day chatting and having pictures taken. Not when there’s delicious worcesterberry and strawberry jam to be made.

http://srcentre.org.uk/saffron-acres
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