Whitefish jam company highlights local flavors
A customer walks up to the House on the Hill Jam booth at the Downtown Farmers Market and asks a question — what is chuckleberry jam?
Sarah Lamb laughs, because it’s a question she has been asked many times before. She explains it’s a combination of Flathead cherries and huckleberries.
Chuckleberry jam is one of Lamb’s signature flavors. It’s a strong representation of her focus on local ingredients combined in unexpected ways.
Lamb has a few standbys at House on the Hill — strawberry, huckleberry, strawberry rhubarb, and Flathead cherry.
Then there’s cherry jalapeno and huckleberry habanero for a little spice. But there’s also peach raspberry, along with chocolate cherry and white chocolate huckleberry.
The name, House on a Hill, came about simply because the Lamb family lived in a house on a hill and that’s what everyone called it. They’ve since moved to Whitefish, but the name stuck and continues to be the symbol for the six-year-old business.
Lamb stocks a few set jams all the time, but most come and go with the fruit seasons, or pop up as inspiration strikes. Lamb experimented with watermelon-basil jam and she’ll make apricot jam while the fruit is in season. She freezes some fruits to make jam all year, but she prefers to make most of her jams with fresh fruit.
“The fresh fruit tastes so much better,” she said. “I don’t like to stock a lot of jam. I want it to be eaten within a month or two because that’s when it tastes the best.”
Ask Lamb if she makes jam or jelly and the response shows her passion. Without a doubt it’s jam — she mashes the whole fruit and doesn’t add any water. She makes jelly only if that’s the only way the fruit can be turned into the sweet spread.
“For the most part I stick straight with the fruit for jam,” she said. “Even the huckleberry has more huckleberries in it than sugar.”
House on the Hill also has jams made with Stevia for those looking for a sugar-free option — that’s been especially popular in the huckleberry. Lamb takes requests too, which often results in creating a jam she’s never tried before.
Lamb’s inspiration for making jam really began long before House on the Hill. As a kid, she had never enjoyed store-bought jam. So when she had her own children — she and her husband have six kids — it was time to learn to make jam.
Eventually she took a few jars to the fair. When she brought home blue ribbons, she realized she had something people enjoyed.
“I really wanted to be part of the farmers markets, but I wasn’t sure what I could do,” she said. “I’m not skilled to raise enough tomatoes to sell, but I love to make jam. This grew out of that.”
Specifically selling her jam at the farmers market was important to Lamb, but so was purchasing as much of her ingredients from local producers as possible.
“I want people to buy local from me, so I need to do the same thing,” she said. “I like to mainly use local produce working with local producers and farmers. When someone buys my jam they are supporting 10 other businesses too.”