A desire to feed their family well led David and Emily Boynton to start growing their own food. Now, they’re sharing the goodness of their garden with the community.
They grow produce based on the season, and make preserves, finishing salts and sauces inspired by what’s at the market or in their garden.
The Boyntons moved to North Carolina in 2003, and Emily volunteered at SEEDS, a nonprofit community garden. When she became associate director, she did a lot of after school programs with DIG, a farming and leadership development program for youth, where she got an introduction to farming.
After she and her husband had their first child, they moved to Pittsboro, bought a small farm, and decided they were going to farm.
“We started out growing vegetables, and we were just going to be a farm,” she said.
When she was on the board of the Chatham Mills Farmers’ Market, she said they wanted someone to sell jam. So, Emily and her husband started making jam and hot sauce, in addition to the dried salts they were already producing.
“It was less about selling the produce, and more about just using everything we grew or bought from other people,” she said. “Because we were sold in farmers’ markets, we had great connections with other farmers, and we were able to source really good produce and fruit.”
Emily said she and her husband also bring back tart cherries and apricots from northern Michigan where her husband grew up.
“People wait, and they’re like, OK, when are you guys going to Michigan?’ because they know when we come back we have tart cherries,” she said. “I had a guy who bought 18 pints of tart cherries because he just loves them.”
Emily said 98 percent of their jams don’t have any pectin, but they use some in their jellies and pepper jellies. She said she was interested in not using pectin because she wanted just fruit in the jams.
“We just put the fruit, organic sugar, organic lemon juice, and it’s cooked down until it reaches the consistency of jam,” she said.
Fiddlehead sell a lot of hot sauce, and one of its best-selling jams is the roasted strawberry preserves that they won a Good Food Award for in 2018.
At the Boyntons’ farm, they grow their own hot peppers and herbs. This year, they are experimenting with trifoliate oranges. It is the only kind of citrus that will grow north of Florida. The rest of their produce they buy from other farms and Eastern Carolina Organics, a wholesaler that work with local organic farmers.
“The important thing for us is that it says exactly on the label where it came from,” she said. “You can look at our label and know what farm it came from, you know if it’s organic or not, you can go home and Google the farm on your label and know exactly who grew it.”
Apart from Fiddlehead Farm, Emily works full time at a nonprofit called RAFI which stands for Rural Advancement Foundation International. She loves her job and plans to keep doing that and running the farm at the same time.
“I think we are where we’ll be, we’re not going to grow,” she said. “We’re really happy, we love our little niche, it’s fun, and I think we’re going to find a balance where we’re at now.”
Fiddlehead Farm sells at the Saturday Carrboro Farmers’ Market and all four Weaver Street Market locations. Its other locations can be found on its website here.
Reporting via Britney Nguyen, featured image via Emily Boynton of Fiddlehead Farm.
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