About us
Wild Side is a business born from an enthusiasm for cooking, boating, waterways and hedgerows. It is run by Helen Tidy who was keen to combine her love of cooking with husband Andy’s enthusiasm for narrowboating. Noticing that the towpath hedgerows were an overflowing larder of wild food, Helen began to experiment with making homemade preserves. Wild Side Handmade Preserves is the end result of these labours.
- We like to incorporate something wild into our products (although there are exceptions!).
- Many of our ingredients are foraged from along the Inland Waterways of England and Wales as we cruise in our narrowboat. This ensures our preserves are made with the freshest ingredients allowing us to capture the taste of the season and seal it in a jar.
- Keeping our ingredients locally sourced is one of our main aims so when it has not been foraged, much of it comes from local gardens, farm shops and markets.
- All our preserves are handmade in open pans and lovingly produced.
- In order to maintain and promote the Inland Waterways we are happy to support the Canal & River Trust who have kindly given us permission to forage on their land. As a thank you we make an annual donation to the work of the trust.
- Our product range has grown over the years and now includes jams, marmalades, jelly, chutneys and vinegars, mostly produced with a foraged flavour, all homemade with love.
Whilst the business is called Wild Side, reflecting the foraged aspect of our ingredients, we became known as The Jam Butty on account of the 27ft engineless boat we towed behind our main narrowboat. However, life moves on and to let us explore the UK's more distant canals we will, in future, be trading as "Wild Side aboard the Jam Boat" from a new 59ft narrowboat.
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