home page (Author: ) (Date Submitted: 4/8/2005) Sunflower Sundries was started in 1992 by Jennifer Gleason. Born in 1957, Jennifer grew up in the small town of Batavia, Ohio. She spent her senior year of high school as an exchange student to India where she was very much affected by the teachings of Ghandi and the production of goods by hand, in cottage industries. It has been her life long inspiration to make things that people use in their daily life, by hand, and of high quality. Today this manifests itself in the products made on the Sunflower Sundries Farm: herbal soap, traditional fruit jam, coarse-grained mustard,and fine vegetable pickles.
Cottage Industry (Author: Jennifer Gleason) (Date Submitted: 6/8/2004) We make several of our products using a local cottage industry of several neighbors and friends that wrap our soap by hand at home. They make 13 cents per bar and don't have to hire a baby sitter or drive to work. Our herbal sachets are made by hand stamping cotton bags, one color at a time. Then they are filled with herbs and essential oils, then tied. They are then placed in a cello bag, sealed and a header card is stapled to the top. The cotton bags could be printed by the manufacturer, but we prefer to keep the work local and use hand labor. Most people would prefer to work at home on this type of job. We continually look for ways of spreading this concept.
