Red Hen Cannery Rivals the Royals

Catching Up with Carpinteria’s Queen of Homemade Marmalade

A jar of marmalade from Red Hen Cannery in Carpinteria | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

By the time the royals rolled into nearby Montecito, Maureen and James Claffey of Red Hen Cannery in Carpinteria were accustomed to local headlines gone global. Since starting their homegrown and homemade marmalade and jam company in 2013, they’d endured the Thomas Fire blazing their mountains and barely evaded the ensuing mudslides. Then, just as the economy flickered back to life, the pandemic pounced.

So, they can be forgiven if the fact that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle arrived in 2020 wasn’t top of mind. And it would have likely stayed that way if the royal couple hadn’t bought some cotton candy from the Claffeys’ daughter, a kindly exchange reported on Page Six.

The Claffey family at Red Hen Cannery in Carpinteria | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

“They didn’t introduce themselves,” recalled Maureen of their humble approach. “So, I said, ‘Based on your accent, you might like marmalade.’”

That was more than a year ago. But just last month, Markle released her first As Ever raspberry jam, and it sold out in less than an hour.

“Is it possible they were inspired?” wondered Maureen last week, curious if her marmalades and jams may have set Markle on her latest path. “It’s possible,” she answered with a self-effacing laugh.

It wouldn’t be a bad move, at least if connecting to Carp.’s agricultural roots is important. Maureen, whose maiden name is Foley, comes from one of the original “pioneer wagon trail” families that settled Carpinteria in the 1860s. “We’re Bailards, as in the offramp,” she said, explaining that her relatives have been farming off of Bailard Avenue ever since. Today, it’s known as Foley Farms, which once ran a popular u-pick berry operation. Her dad, who still runs the ranch, was one of the folks behind the creation of the Santa Barbara Farmers’ Market.

Over the generations, they’ve explored the growing trends, from hay, walnuts, and lima beans to lemons, oranges, cherimoyas, and avocados, the latter of which forms the core of their commercial business these days. As they switched crops, they’d always leave a few trees behind, like the three heritage Valencia oranges that now serve as the backbone of Red Hen’s marmalade making.

A dozen years ago, after toiling in journalism (including at this newspaper), creating art, and teaching art, Maureen asked her family if she could use some of those old fruit trees to launch a canning business. “I was one woman with lots of fruit,” she explained, and the business quickly boomed. “I didn’t know homemade marmalade was going to be something that the United States doesn’t really have.”

James Claffey of Red Hen Cannery in Carpinteria | Photo: Ingrid Bostrom

The citrus-based preserve is pervasive basically anywhere that the British empire expanded, and then some. “They’re kind of everywhere, and they’re a bit fanatical,” she said of marmalade enthusiasts. “When they find something good, they seem to really love it.”

The experts love Red Hen too, as some of the Claffeys’ myriad creations — probably more than 100 to date — have earned esteemed honors, including two recent bronzes from the International Marmalade Awards in England. Those went to the tangelo-calamansi — “it’s orange marmalade on hyperburst” — and the hot & smokey orange marmalade, which was inspired by the Thomas Fire. “It’s not a toast-type marmalade,” said Maureen of that one, which is almost like a pepper jelly. “It’s more of a charcuterie type of marmalade.”

When Maureen went back to school to get her teaching credential a few years ago — she now teaches English and journalism to 6th and 7th graders in Solvang — James, who also teaches English at Alta Vista in Santa Barbara, started to take on much of the work. Being Irish, said Maureen, “He’s my quality control. He has a serious marmalade point of view.”

They’re also writers — he does prose poetry, she writes novels — and integrate that into their packaging. “Our labels are all pieces of our writing,” she said. “Our slogan is ‘fruit as poetry.’”

They’ve scaled back considerably since the pre-disaster days, now only selling Red Hen at the Saturday farmers’ market in Santa Barbara, and even then, only every other week or so. (She suggests emailing to check their schedule.) But the business continues to connect Maureen to her roots, as the basic formula is based on her grandmother’s recipe.

“I feel like I’m keeping alive the pioneer heritage of not wasting food,” said Maureen of those fruits that were just rotting on the ground before Red Hen began. “I grew up with everyone around me canning during the summer as a way of preserving the harvest. It wasn’t a fancy artisanal thing. It was very practical.”

The Claffeys may be a bit too busy to deal with the rush that a royal connection would create, but they wouldn’t turn it down. Said Maureen, “They can reach out to me anytime.”

See redhencannery.com.