Situated at the heart of Southall, The Jammery is a nexus of farming, preservation, and hospitality. It is our dedicated preservation kitchen, where the farm's daily harvest is canned, pickled, fermented, dried, dehydrated, frozen, cured, and transformed into jams and jellies at the peak of freshness.
The name itself is a nod to tradition. Much like a "hammery" is a place for making ham, The Jammery is where we make jam, along with hundreds of other expressions of what is grown at Southall.
Preservation is an important part of our larger approach to sustainability. It allows us to make thoughtful use of abundance, reduce waste, and carry the flavor and story of one growing season into the next.

Preserving More Than the Harvest

For Chef Richard Jones, The Jammery is about preserving more than food.

Having spent more than 25 years living, working, and traveling throughout the Southeast, and nearly two decades working on farms in Middle Tennessee, Chef Richard sees food as a way to understand the history and culture of the region.

Southall grows rare and distinctive varieties selected not simply for yield or ease of transportation, but for flavor, diversity, and the stories they carry.

As Chef Richard explains it, "Here at The Jammery, we are preserving not only the food, but the past for the future."

That philosophy shapes what happens inside the kitchen every day.

What Happens to Southall's Harvest?

When the farm produces more than can immediately be served, ingredients are quickly preserved at peak freshness. What happens next depends entirely on the harvest.

Southall grows Speckled Roman and Amish Paste tomatoes specifically suited for preservation. They might become canned tomato filets for Bloody Mary mix, marinara for winter menus at Sojourner, heirloom salsa, gazpacho, or spiced tomato jam.

More than 2,000 Habanada pepper plants produce thousands of peppers that pass through The Jammery. More than 1,000 pounds are preserved through fermentation before becoming Southall's signature hot sauce.

Cucumbers arrive by the hundreds of pounds. By the end of August, more than 800 pounds may be transformed into bread-and-butter pickles for Sojourner burgers alone, while additional harvest becomes sandwich slices, German spears, spicy pickles, relishes, and other preserved products available at the Farmstand.

Then there are the orchards.

More than 8,000 pounds of apples are harvested each year, with a significant portion passing through The Jammery. They become cider jelly, spiced cider jelly, apple butter, applesauce, apple cider, hard cider, cider vinegar, and apple gastrique.

Even what's left after pressing the apples has a purpose: it becomes food for Southall's chickens.

Capturing the Season at Its Peak

Preservation isn't limited to what can be put in a jar.

Hundreds of pounds of berries are washed at peak ripeness and blast-chilled to -40°F before being packaged for long-term frozen storage. With more than 1,200 pounds stored at a time, The Jammery can pull berries in batches throughout the year to create jams, preserves, and spreads for both Southall's kitchens and retail collection.

This means the flavor of a berry harvested at its best can reappear months later, long after its natural growing season has passed.

It's a practical approach to sustainability, but it's also a culinary one. Preservation gives our chefs another way to work within the natural rhythms of the farm rather than asking the farm to conform to the needs of a menu.

Why Southall Grows for Flavor

The relationship between farm and kitchen begins before anything is harvested.

Many commercial crops are selected for qualities such as ease of cultivation, market acceptance, storage life, and profitability. At Southall, our farmers and chefs have the freedom to consider something else first: flavor.

Varieties including Sungold tomatoes, Carmen peppers, Limecrisp cucumbers, and Habanada peppers are grown because of what they can bring to the plate.

For Chef Richard, flavor is the guiding light.

Exceptional ingredients require less intervention. Technique still matters, as do flavor affinity and thoughtful combinations, but beginning with something remarkable allows our chefs to step aside and let the ingredient speak for itself.

It's an approach that helps Southall's kitchens showcase the farm, introduce guests to unexpected ingredients, explore contemporary Southern food, and connect what is served at the table to the history and culture surrounding it.

From The Jammery to the Rest of Southall

What begins inside The Jammery doesn't stay there.

Preserved ingredients make their way throughout Southall, from the farm's signature Michelin Green Star restaurant, January, to Sojourner, Dottie's, private events, and even the Spa. Guests can also discover select Jammery products at the Farmstand and Emma's Boutique to take home.

In this way, one harvest can become many experiences.

A summer tomato might return on a winter menu. A cucumber harvested at its peak can become a pickle served months later. Apples can move from orchard to cider press to vinegar, with the remaining pulp returning to the farm as feed.

It creates a continuous relationship between field, kitchen, guest, and farm.

Food, Storytelling and "Edutainment"

The Jammery is also a place where guests can experience this philosophy firsthand.

Chef Richard describes the approach as "edutainment," bringing food and storytelling together in a way that makes learning engaging, approachable, and, most importantly, fun.

Through experiences such as Food Fables, guests can explore the ancient lineage of heirloom ingredients while tasting hyper-seasonal dishes built around what is coming from the fields. Honey tastings explore Southall's mono-floral honeys in unexpected ways, while culinary classes, custom menus, beverage tastings, and intimate dining experiences create opportunities to understand not just what something tastes like, but why.

It's a chance to explore food from soil and seed to fork, including how flavor develops, why certain ingredients work together, where our foodways originated, and why our relationship with food matters.

Preservation as a Practice of Sustainability

Sustainability at Southall encompasses much more than The Jammery, but preservation offers one of its most tangible expressions.

It can be seen in more than 1,000 pounds of Habanada peppers fermenting for hot sauce. In thousands of pounds of apples becoming cider, vinegar, and preserves. In berries frozen at the height of ripeness. And in the apple pulp that ultimately finds its way back to the chickens.

These aren't isolated sustainability initiatives. They're part of a larger system designed to make thoughtful use of what the farm provides.

At The Jammery, preservation allows us to capture abundance rather than waste it, carry the seasons forward, and connect today's guests with generations of Southern foodways.

As Chef Richard puts it, we're preserving the past for the future.

And sometimes, that begins with a jar of jam.