Sweeten the World

On my walks near the beach this summer, I loved seeing and smelling the abundant salt-spray rose and catching sight of their seed-bearing fruit, rose hips. Besides helping to stabilize dunes, the tart fruit from these plants are used in many beneficial and delicious ways, like herbal tea, syrup, soup, wine, and bread. On Cape Cod, rose hips are frequently used to make jelly or jam. Green Briar Jam Kitchen in Sandwich, MA, is the oldest jam kitchen in America, and its staff produces over 20,000 jars a year in the vintage 1915 kitchen. In 1939, while visiting Green Briar, the setting for his children’s books, Thornton W. Burgess said to his jam making friend, “Tis a wonderful thing to sweeten the world, which is in a jam and needs preserving.”