Our Story

I'm Angharad, a farmer's daughter from the Welsh Valleys. I grew up with my Mum and Grandmothers making preserves, competing at the local agricultural shows, using the glut of the seasons to produce jars of deliciousness.

After working in recruitment and then for a large supermarket chain, I decided that with the birth of my children I wanted to follow my genes and set up The Preservation Society, producing jars packed with deliciousness using local seasonal ingredients.

All of our recipes are family favourites, some handed down from my grandmothers, others crossing the pond from great friends in the US. We love using local seasonal ingredients, there really is nothing better and we have some great local produces in the Wye Valley and brilliant network of local "Swap Croppers" sharing their apples, quince and damsons plus our infamous Lord Lambourne apples from Paul Gowen, his Dad planted the apple tree about 50 years ago and we use the glut in our Lord Lambourne's Scrumpy Butter with Calvados.

We make our preserves traditionally, in small batches using the open pan method and plenty of time, most batches take about 6 hours to cook before the jars are hand filled, hand lidded and labelled. We're a small artisan kitchen and love it that way.Our preservatives are sugar, local cider vinegar and time - we don't use additives as we want the ingredients to speak for themselves.

All of our jars are recyclable and you can return them and we'll give you 10p back - think of us as your local Pop Bottle business. Our packaging is recycled & recycleable and even the sleeves on our bottles are 100% compostable.

We've won awards too, Wales the True Taste, Great Taste, World Marmalade and I've had the pleasure of judging the World Jampionships, Great Taste Awards, British Sandwich Awards and Pizza & Pasta Awards too.

In 2018 I joined a team to Cameroon where I had the pleasure of teaching the amazing women of Dschang how to preserve, of the 40 women trained, now over 400 have preserving schools, enabling them to utilise the glut of their delicious organic fruit and veg.

Join us for one of our courses, or contact me if you are a group that would be interested and I'll come to you.

In December 2014 I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, a bit of a blow but sadly far too common. I wanted to give me to the amazing people that treated me and realised that I could make jam - taste is a huge part of chemo treatment! We now make our award winning Blissfully Blackcurrant Jam with money from every jar going to Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff. I also support and sell their Velindre Cookbook, which really is about making you smile - food is so powerful!!!

Needless to say, I'm very good at talking and making preserves, but not so good at labelling - I'm so lucky to have the brilliant Daryl who joins me for a few days a month to label label label. He's been with me since the start and I couldn't do it without him!!!

You can buy online or join us at one of the markets and festivals,

Lots of love,

Angharad x