LANIER COUNTY — A Mayhaw is a juicy, ripe, often bright red berry that grows on a Hawthorne tree and gets its name because it’s harvested in May from the Hawthorne… Mayhaw. It makes amazingly delicious jellies, syrup and even wine. It grows mostly in the Southeastern U.S.

Jimmy and Emma Moore, who live just over the county line in Lanier north of the Moody AFB bombing range, learned about Mayhaws several years ago. The retired couple have kept busy tending their own orchard of Hawthorne trees in a beautiful quiet setting on a nice patch of land maybe two miles from Bemiss Road, if that.

The Moores combined their first names – Jimmy and Emma – into “Jem’s” to create their own moniker for their berry business. Jem’s Mayhaws sells grafted trees to those who want to have a Mayhaw berry tree or three in their yard or start their own orchard. They sell some of the most delicious, homemade jelly and syrup made from Mayhaw berries you’d ever want to taste.

They make juice from the berries too, but although they can make some fairly potent wine from the fruit, they dare not sell it because they’re not licensed to do so.

The Mayhaw is known for producing a sweet but tangy, tart fruit that, except for that tartness, produces a very sweet jelly similar to an apple jelly. (A few samples on a cracker made it hard to put down the spreading knife and pick up the pen to continue this interview. We’re talking ‘delicious’ here.)

The syrup made from Mayhaws can be used like any other syrup, on pancakes, waffles or biscuits. “We have a daughter who loves to put the syrup on ham,” Emma Moore said.

Business got so good, the Moores installed a large kitchen in a building just behind their modest home, which sits along the dirt-gravel road on a pond surrounded by a beautiful green lawn and of course, rows of varying species of Hawthorne trees.

The kitchen is a state-inspected and approved kitchen for producing their Mayhaw products.

“I got into this in 1994, after I retired from the PCA mill in Clyattville after 31 years there,” Jimmy Moore said. “A friend of mine over in Hahira started growing some, so I got into it. I tell people I got into it because so little is known about Mayhaws that no one could tell me how to do it,” he said with a chuckle.

“You know, in agriculture, any farmer will tell you someone is always telling you how to grow a crop, when really, the farmer doing the growing usually knows best.”

The Moores made their own jelly from the berries and began to think that this might be a good side business to keep them busy while they enjoy their retirement years. Now the business has grown, by word of mouth, to the point that it’s almost made them busier than they wish to be, Moore said.

“I found out there’s not much known about producing Mayhaws in a commercial setting. So this has been an educational process,” he said. “But I’m not sure how long we can keep this up. We’ve been doing it for 14 years now. We started out small, but have built up our business considerably.”

Mayhaws, Moore explains, are found in southern states in the Gulf of Mexico region, mainly in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia, but have been known to be found in Georgia and up to North Carolina and South Carolina.

He’s networked with the few Mayhaw growers around the region, and has become particularly connected to the Louisiana growers. The Louisiana bunch has organized and formed their own Mayhaw growers association so they can apply for assistance from state agricultural assistance sources like the local extension office.

The Louisiana effort has been so successful that Mayhaw jelly is the state jelly there, Moore noted.