Local Biz Happy to Be in a Jam
For Lisa Faber, “being in a jam” is the sweetest place to be. Since the late 1990s, she has been making preserves that capture each season and the relationships she’s built with local and Midwest farmers. What makes her jam special is how she lets the land and its natural rhythms guide her flavors. When local fruit farming productivity fluctuates, so do the flavors of the handmade preserves. In a world of mass production, Sunshine In A Jar embraces nature’s variability.
Lisa’s journey began during a solo retreat at the Resurrection Retreat Center (now home to Loyola University Retreat and Ecology Campus) in Woodstock, IL. While walking the trails of the 100-acre property in the late 90s, she discovered a large patch of wild black raspberries. After receiving permission to pick the berries, she started making jams for friends and family.
The response was immediate. One friend described the jam as “sunshine in a jar” – a name that captured what Lisa was creating and became the heart of her business.
Though semiretired, Lisa joined the team at Ethereal Confection in Woodstock, IL in 2013. Starting in their kitchen roasting cacao beans, she shared samples of her jam with owners Mary and Michael Ervin and Sara Miller. They began incorporating her flavors into their products, and Ethereal offered Lisa the use of their kitchen to build her Sunshine In A Jar business.
“I love that we could support another local business, friend and employee,” said Mary Ervin, who helped Lisa design the labels for her jars. “It’s been really nice; when we started, we couldn’t find a kitchen to rent, so we’re sort of paying it forward.”
Ethereal uses Lisa’s strawberry jam in their Pop-Tart-like pastries, blends her apple butter into Apple Pie Moonshine cocktails, and pairs her wild grape jam with charcuterie boards.
Later, Lisa relocated to the kitchen of Simple Café and Market in Lake Geneva, WI, finding another good fit with owners Tom Hartz and Young Cho. Simple is committed to using locally grown, seasonal ingredients as much as possible. They excel at small batch, seasonal and artisan foods with a passion for educating staff and customers.
Her journey from finding wild berries to crafting preserves reflects the core of her business: a love of place, people, and the fruits of the land. Her network of local farms has become a web of relationships built on shared values.
“Picking wild berries, working with farmers and making jam is meditative for me,” Lisa shares, “and I hope that the feeling of peace – and the flavor of the outdoors – shines through in every batch!”