Retirement was the beginning of a whole new venture for jam maker Wendy Cowie, who opened her business “Wendy’s Crafts” eight years ago.
Ms Cowie had been making jams, marmalades and relishes for 32 years having grown up in a farming background, acquiring her bottling skills and passion from a young age.
Each February Miss Cowie would visit her mother in Wagga and enjoy making blackberry jam with her, spending a week or more to get the jams ready for the whole year.
“I especially enjoyed the time with my mum, we used to go out to the blackberry fields and actually picked the blackberries together,” Miss Cowie said.
“In later years of course she couldn’t come out with me but she used to then still cook with me when I came back with all the blackberries.”
The recipes that Miss Cowie uses refer back to her grandmother’s 1945 ‘Country Women’s Association’ cookbooks.
Miss Cowie revealed that the biggest secret behind her homemade jams comes from the recipes her mother shared with her as a young girl. However, she is open to trying recipes that her customers request, looking online and making her own.
“I even have made up my own recipes now which I’m very proud of, the fact that I managed to make one that is popular too,” Miss Cowie said.
Along with the jams, marmalades and relishes Wendy’s Craft sells local honey from her friend’s farm. The farm has a wide variety of fruits that Miss Cowie uses for her jams, making them organically made, including figs, quinces, plums and feijoas.
“For every fruit there is, you can make a jam, I just make the ones where I can easily get access to the fruit,” she said.
“So because they gave me the fruit, I tried giving them money but I gave them the jars to put their honey in and then I sold the honey for them.”
Ms Cowie is determined to keep making her jams until she physically is no longer able to and strives to keep the art of jam-making and her family’s passion alive.
“Even now when I cook the blackberries the smell takes me back to when I used to do it with my mum,” she said.
“She’s been gone now for five years, yeah even now I think I wish I could tell Mum when something good happens.”