Since 1989 Bill and Gail Thomas have operated their bunny farm.

They offer both pet bunnies and a huge variety of jams, jellies and fruit butters.

“We started in farmers markets in 2016,” said Gail. “We started doing farmers markets doing heirloom produce.”

She makes 60 to 70 varieties of jams at a time and has branched out from farmers markets to the Main Street Antiques where her jams can be found.

They can also be found often at the Cartwright Downtown Farmers Market selling jams and occasionally produce.

They harvest their own black raspberries and apples but buy their strawberries.

“We do about 400 jars a year of strawberry jams. I’d have to have an incredible patch to be able to do that,” Gail said.

A lot of jam recipes come from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s website and others from cook books.

“You go with a base recipe,” Gail said. “A batch is never more than 10 jars.”

She has experimented with other types of jam.

“It’s interesting to bring back some of the recipes that are gone,” Gail said. “Like in the 1930s they started using pop because it was cheaper. So some of my fun ones are fruit juice and pop mixed together.”

She judges her jams by their flavor, not their thickness.

Her own favorite jam is salted caramel apple butter, which is also her best selling preserve.

Some jams sell out so often she has to make two to three batches a week.

The derecho and the COVID-19 have not helped her operations.

“I lost about $300 worth of fruit in my freezer,” Gail said. “Business up at Cartwright has been pretty steady this year, surprisingly. But of course we don’t have near what we’d like to have. So COVID has kind of changed that.”

She started selling some jams at the antique store a year and a half ago because she was a good friend of the owner.

“We’re going to start doing a lot more custom orders for Christmas time, so if somebody has a recipe that grandma used to make we can do it,” Gail said.

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Contact Thomas Nelson at 641-753-6611 or tnelson@timesrepublican.com