A farm in rural Beaver Crossing is producing homemade jams and jellies with a little history mixed in.
Debbie and Bob Kennel, owners of Kennelwood Farms, began producing jam from trees and wild fruits on the farm in 2019.
Bob is the fifth generation caretaker of the property in his family, which his great-great grandfather settled as part of the Homestead Act of 1862, signed by Ulysses S. Grant. A keen eye can see the history of the property. Bob said a close look through the grass in some areas reveals wagon ruts left by travelers on the Oregon Trail.
“In the spring before grass starts growing very tall, you can get down and look along the ground and you can still see remnants of the original wagon trail,” Bob said. “It's the same area where I still go through with the tractor. They knew what they were doing traveling this land.”
The farm even played host to the Donner Party early in its travels before its now infamous journey through the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
“We're on the southern branch of the Oregon Trail, so the farm is in a historic area,” Debbie said. “It was a stagecoach stop at one time and evidently, they even had a post office there.”
The history didn't stop after the last wagon rolled through. Bob's grandfather, Guy, donated part of the land for a country schoolhouse.
“There's a guy, gosh I wish I could remember his name...he used to live down south of where we lived and he used to go to that country school,” he said. “He stops by here and talks to us. He'll tell us stories of him remembering going to that school and they would go up on the hill in our pasture and use that for sledding down in the winter.
“It's neat to hear the stories about the place.”
Bob and Debbie do what they can to make sure the historic plot continues to produce its bounties. They've seen the fragility of land and how quickly history can be lost after a tornado in 2014. The twister wiped out all but one of the orchard trees Bob's father, Clifton, planted in the 1970s.
“It took at out all but one tree and took out part of it,” Bob said. “Here in the last six years or so, we've been rebuilding, replanting...so we don't get the crops off of them yet like we used to except that one apple tree that survived.”
“It still puts out a lot of apples,” added Debbie.
With the apples from the remaining tree, Bob and Debbie thought it fitting to produce Bob's family's special apple cinnamon jam.
“I had never had it before we got together and I'm really picky, but it's amazing,” Debbie said. “Then we lost him and we ran out of jelly. I missed him and his cinnamon apple jelly and Bob's mom said 'Honey, I have the recipe.' So we made it.”
Their jam business originally started out as a way to appease their own cravings for Clifton's jelly, but a kitchen crammed with jelly jars sparked an idea to begin selling the product.
“We made the cinnamon apple jelly and other kinds we thought would taste good,” Bob said. “It got to where we liked making it with each other but pretty soon we saw it all sitting around and thought 'we're never going to eat all this.' So we wondered if people would be interested in them at farmer's markets.”
The Kennel's products can now be found in stores throughout the area as well as numerous farmer's markets and festivals. The stand has a weekly presence at the Seward Farmer's Market and recently operated at the Friend Fourth of July celebration.
The products on the shelves and tables at those events stretch far beyond the signature apple cinnamon jelly. Bob and Debbie said they now have 42 flavors and add new offerings as additional ingredients become available or customers submit requests. They sell the traditional fruit jams but have also expanded to creative tastes such as a pineapple upside down flavor and four types of soda-based jellies.
“We're always trying to come up with new flavors that you can't go into the store and readily buy,” Bob said.
And they don't sell jelly simply to use on toast. Experiments at home and customer feedback has shown that the jams can be multipurpose.
“A lot of people use our jellies to use as marinades on meat,” Debbie said. “They put it on pork chops, barbecue ribs. They even use our Dr. Pepper jelly on ham.”
They use fruit from the trees and wild berries that grow on the farm when they can but most of the produce used is naturally and locally sourced. Most jellies have a simple ingredient list with the fruit, sugar and pectin. No preservatives are in sight and that makes the difference, Debbie said.
“(Store bought jelly) has a bunch of preservatives and bad stuff and we do not do that,” Debbie said.
Shoppers at the Kennelwood Farms booth may have noticed the addition of honey. Much like the jams, the jars of honey and flavored honey sticks are a nod to the farm's history.
Bob and Debbie recently welcomed bee hives back to the property. Bob said his grandfather once maintained a couple of hives and showed Bob at an early age the wonders of naturally produced honey.
“It's kind of full circle,” he said. “I remember when I was a kid, my grandpa was taking care of that property and he had beehives down there. I'd go down there with him, he'd get into the hive and break off a piece of that honeycomb. I'd eat on that honeycomb like it was a candy bar.
“It's kind of neat that after two generations and all these years, beehives have come back to the property again.”
Between the late nights producing jelly, the hot hours in the sun harvesting and maintaining the property and the ever growing knowledge of what bees do and do not like, the operation is a labor of love. Recently retired, Bob said he enjoys the work that goes into Kennelwood Farms and sees it as a continuation of the family property that has produced wonders for more than 150 years.
“We refuse to call ourselves the owner of the property because we are merely the caretakers of it for this generation,” he said. “That land has always had such a special place in our heart.
“We call it Valhalla. If we do anything to the land, it's to improve it.”
