In her former job as a pastry chef, April often found farmers trying to pawn off an extra flat of berries at the height of the season. There was only so much fruit she could put onto the dessert menu before the fragile produce languished in the refrigerator. She encouraged the farmers to turn their extra berries into jam. “Who’s got time?” they would say and, "anyway, who even knows how?".

Growing up in a small farming community in the Mississippi hill country, the preserves on April's family table were made by her mother, grandmother, aunts, and other women in the community. At her local Carrboro, North Carolina farmers' market she saw that the produce was some of the best in the country but the quality of the jams and jellies could not compare to her family's. She lamented this fact and naively thought since she had watched her mother and grandmother, she would make her own. Her first batch of blueberry jam was stiff and gritty. Not one to back down from a challenge, April's first trials started her now 15 year journey mastering the craft of preserving. Today, Farmer's Daughter turns thousands of pounds of the very best North Carolina grown produce into award-winning products while honoring the age-old techniques wielded by Southern housewives of past generations.