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Sweet Sound Of Success
BY GLENDA DYER
Triune
resident Jake Lamb, who has had a long career in the audio and video business,
is now stirring up things in Eagleville.
About three years ago the Iowa native set up a kitchen in a unit of the former Flamingo Hotel across from the Co-Op to produce candy and other products for his Sweet Heat Farms company.
Although he is still in the audio and video business, Lamb can be found most days "stirring up trouble," as he calls it, at what was once the kitchen of the Flamingo Express drive-through eatery.
Using old-time recipes handed down through his parents, Lamb concocts peanut brittle, pickles, jellies and other food products. He sells his foods over the Internet and through area stores, state parks and at craft shows.
Among his sales outlets are the Eagleville Co-Op, College Grove Grocery, Hatcher Dairy, Henry Horton, Paris Landing and Fall Creek Falls state parks, Miss Daisy’s at Grassland Market, and a private label deal at Nolensville Feed Mill.
Now 54, Lamb started his candy-making career at age eight, when he began assisting his father in making peanut brittle.
"At first I was in charge of buttering the pans, and then I worked my way up to washing the pans," he said. "Then I got to stir my first batch."
Later, he started making candy for friends at Christmas time, who told him he should sell it. After he started selling the peanut brittle at craft shows, store owners approached him about selling it in their stores.
"So it has grown and grown," Lamb said.
Over the years, he has expanded his product line by adding other flavors to his brittle, including pecan, cashews, a variety called Totally Nuts that has eight different kinds of nuts except peanuts, and a milk chocolate chunk recipe.
"Everyone seems to have a recipe for peanut brittle so I do variations on a theme," he said.
He also makes a bread and butter pickle using a century-old recipe handed down through his mother. Another product he makes is hot chocolate pepper jelly, using a variety of green peppers called "chocolate" and jalapenos and his homemade Habanero sauce.
Lamb’s jellies include blueberry and blackberry plus a Concord grape jelly that has cherry pieces floating in it. It is called "Floating Cherry, Hidden Grape," a tribute to the famous martial arts film. His "Merry Tri-Berry" jelly is made with raspberries, blackberries and blueberries.
He grows as much of the vegetables and berries for his foods as he has time to do and buys other produce from farmer’s markets, trying to use as much Tennessee produce as possible.
Lamb said he is now having difficulty in keeping up with the demand for his products, and he is looking at the next level of production. An option would be using an FDA-approved kitchen service that would have employees available to cook under his supervision.
"Hopefully, they will be opening up a Tennessee kitchen for small guys like me sometime in the early summer," he said, noting that the kitchens can cook in "monster batches."
In addition to his busy food business schedule, Lamb, who has a degree in radio, television and film from the University of Georgia, also does voice overs, makes DVD’s and other related work. Types of recordings he does include commercials, documentaries, audio books, business presentations and movie and game trailers. He does character voices in areas such as cartoons, films, video games and voice systems.
Nashville is a good place to do his audio work because the city has some of the best recording studios in the industry, he said.
Lamb’s father was with the Red Cross so he has lived in many states and abroad, but he stills speaks with mostly a Midwestern accent. He can also speak German, having lived in that country for five years.
He and his wife, Eva, who is now vice president of sales for Acorn Video in Nashville, came to Tennessee about 15 years ago with his job. They were driving out in the countryside one day and found an older home with a white picket fence on about eight acres in Triune.
"We bought it within 15 minutes," he said. "Compared to the other cities I’ve lived in, Nashville is still clean and green and safe."
He and Eva have no children but do have four dogs and three cats.
"I’m so much of a kid at heart, I don’t think I could ever raise children," Lamb said. "Candy is hard to make but raising children is far too grown up for me."
Eva helps him at the craft shows but doesn’t have time to help with the candy making because of her job.
"We call her the bread winner, and I occasionally get to put butter on the bread," he said.