Jams and Jellies
History
Our family has been intimately affected by cancer. When our mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, she made a sincere effort to do everything she could to beat it. Along with prescribed treatments from her health care providers, she also made adjustments to her dietary supplements and began avoiding foods which have been connected to inflammation and by extension, cancer. One of these was refined sugar.
Our mother loved her treats and jellies, so to help her with her desire to battle inflammation, we began experimenting with jellies, applesauce, and other recipes using honey as a replacement for sugar. It was not always easy, but fortunately periodicals by the American Honey Producers Association and local Beekeepers associations had no shortage of recipe tips and tricks. Several runny batches of applesauce and clumpy batches of Jelly later, we had learned how to balance the ratio of liquid and solid ingredients and how to work with pectin in such a way that the jams and jellies began coming out just they should!
Our mother won her battle against breast cancer, and continued enjoying honey-based jams, jellies, applesauce, biscuits, and other recipes in the years that followed. We hope that others will taste the difference that honey-only jams and jellies make and appreciate the same benefits that our mother enjoyed from these unique recipes.
We do Jellies Differently
Parkton Bees and Honey continues to produce jams and jellies exclusively using honey produced by our bees. Maryland’s Cottage Food law, passed in 2012 allows Parkton Bees and Honey to sell the Jams and Jellies we produce to customers who visit our farm. We also specialize in non-traditional jams and jellies, such as kiwi berry and persimmon. We eventually hope to expand into producing other unique jellies, such as service berry and wineberry. Jellies and Jams are a labor-intensive process at the small scale we operate in, so we have limited quantities for sale. We can’t guarantee that you will like the taste of kiwi berries or persimmon in jelly form, but if you want to try a unique and low-glycemic jam or jelly, we might have just what you are looking for!
Availability
We only produce jellies and jams made from fruits produced on our farm and within a small network of farms owned by friends and family. As such, availability of Jams and Jellies can vary considerably from year to year. On April 20th, 2026, a deep freeze fell over our region and damaged many of our crops such that they did not yield enough fruit to make jams and jellies. This includes our grapes, kiwi berries, and blueberries. We hope that 2027 treats our crops better and that the following Jams and Jellies may be available:
- Grape (Jelly)
- Persimmon (Jelly)
- Raspberry (Jam)
Contact us to check availability
Eggs
History
Chickens have been raised at our family farm for over thirty years. In that time we have had numerous varieties of chickens. These varieties included Araucana, Ameraucana, Brahma, Bantam, Barred Rock, Blue Andalusian, Leghorn, Orpington, Road Island Red, Silkie, White-crested Polish, Wyandotte to name a few. After years of trial and error we settled on a flock composed of Leghorn, Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red and Araucana. These give us a variety of egg colors and sizes. While consistency is not our strong suit, our flock of 50 to 60 chickens keep us well-supplied with eggs and entertainment.
Chicken Management
Our flock of 50 – 60 chickens enjoy a combination of spacious coops and free-ranging depending on our availability to watch them. Unfortunately, the same meadows and forests we enjoy at Happy Chicken Acres are also enjoyed by foxes, raccoons, and hawks who are less interested in our eggs than the chickens themselves. We are thankful we have not had to deal with Coyotes and Bears yet. Some of our fellow farmers have not been so fortunate. Our hens provide us with eggs during their productive years and entertainment in their egg-retirement, so only between twenty or thirty of them are producing in any given year. Each spring we refresh our flock with a dozen or so new arrivals to ensure we can continue enjoying eggs through the winter months.
Contact us for more information.
Egg Sales?
Most of our eggs are sold directly to customers on our client list. We do not offer roadside egg sales. If you are local and interested in joining our weekly client list, contact us here. Eggs are a very low-value farm product, so generally we only sell in a radius of 5 miles or along our travel routes to work. A map of our travel routes is going to be available once we get another coop built and can support a larger client list. Currently we sell eggs at $4 a dozen.
Honey
History
Happy Chicken Acres has been selling honey for over twenty years. Over those years we have seen a wide variety of honey harvested from our hives, with unique flavor profiles and qualities. We have also entered honey at the Maryland State Fair so we could offically call our honey “award-winning”! However, many of the beekeepers who purchase live bees from us also sell honey, and we are disinclined to compete with them. Therefore, almost all the honey we produce from our hives is saved, sold at wholesale, or used in our recipes. We love beekeeping and hope to keep doing it for many more decades, but our intention at this time is to expand our business in other areas that will allow us to support local Beekeepers instead of competing with them.