Somewhere in the distance, beyond earshot of Lori and Tim Jordan’s home in Lamoine, the processed, prepackaged world goes about its business. Here, life is a whirl stirred by a wooden spoon: Questions from kids, visits from friends and endless banter all revolve around a six-burner gas stove which bubbles and steams with a collection of fruit-filled saucepans.

“It’s a bit chaotic,” Lori says, lifting lids and shifting pans on the stove. “But it’s good chaotic because there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

By “tunnel,” she means the Jordans’ months-long challenge to establish a new distribution company while continuing to grow their existing fruit spread and preserves business, Out On A Limb. The project has involved a $110,000 investment to build a warehouse addition onto their home, buy a delivery van and hire and train both an office manager-bookkeeper and a distribution manager.

Now the warehouse is nearly finished and nine client companies have thus far signed on with the Jordans’ new distribution company, Eastern Maine Sales & Service, which exclusively handles Maine-made products. The new business is a step forward that frees Lori and Tim to focus on managing the orders rolling in for Out On A Limb products. It also shows their ability to manage what could have been a crippling blow to their business: the sudden retirement in January of the contractor who controlled distribution of the company’s spreads, syrups, pie fillings and other goods.

The Jordans already had poured themselves into Out On A Limb, which they had grown from $20,000 to $120,000 in annual sales in four years. The unexpected change put them out straight. Tim jumped into what felt like endless days on the road – up at 4 a.m. to deliver goods from Greenville to Kittery, while locating and reviving abandoned accounts. Lori managed the production end of the operation, not to mention four kids, a new grandchild and the parade of comings and goings around home.

In their spare time, they blueprinted plans for less hectic lives. One goal was to control more closely their own distribution, and to offer Maine-made producers an alternative to the traditional distribution operators.

The give-and-take between small business and distributor is often one of the most befuddling facts of entrepreneurial life. Distributors tend to carefully guard their route lists, account pricing and relationships to prevent clients from jumping from lowest bid to lowest bid. But the cost of a vehicle, gas and countless hours on the road makes distribution a losing proposition for many small operators.

The result is a blind dependence on distribution contractors, and loss of a potential service link between the business owner and his retail sales client.

“We couldn’t tell our distributor where to go, who to sell to, how to act,” Tim says.

In the kitchen, Tim and Lori make a well-choreographed pair. He empties finished batches into waiting jars. She advances pots along the burners. Timing is crucial, as is the amount of fruit pectin added to cause each batch of fruit to gel into a particular type of product. Spreads, for example, require more pectin than syrups.

The kitchen is a mix of conversation and the smell of simmering strawberries, raspberries, cranberries and blueberries. Visitors inevitably find themselves testing a spoonful of a sample batch, tasting a forkful of pie with a jar of spread or syrup tucked into a bag or pocket.

“I don’t think anybody’s ever walked through here and not had to taste something,” Lori says.

To be clear, the Jordans make fruit spread. The difference is sugar, which, in technical terms, they don’t use, sweetening instead with fruit pectin, a natural sugar. Lori turns a jar of apple spread to show the list of ingredients: apples, white grape juice, spices, citrus pectin, calcium.

“You could eat this whole jar for the calories in a serving of the commercial brands,” she explains.

In sketching out the next step for their business, the Jordans decided the link with stores who sold their products was too important to surrender. They talked with other business owners in the area who felt the same way but could find no alternative. They did some homework and decided the need was sufficient to support a separate business, one that could potentially solve Out On A Limb’s distribution impasse.

They drafted a business plan, figured their needs for warehouse space and equipment, then went to the bank. They officially started the distribution company in March. Tim managed that business, pulling in the initial distribution clients and hitting the road to make deliveries, until June. After interviewing 10 candidates, the couple hired Brewer resident David Blake to take the wheel just in time for the summer season.

In May, they hired Lamoine resident Chrystine Emeigh through the Washington Hancock Agency’s Hire and Higher program to manage the office and keep the books. The program offers financial support for training and a 50 percent reduction for the employees’ first-year workers’ compensation insurance payments.

Blake and Emeigh, a nearly completed warehouse and days that Tim no longer spends driving to corners of the state, all amount to light at the end of the tunnel. The growing list of clients bodes well for the distribution company, which, combined with Out On A Limb, the Jordans anticipate will generate $300,000 in revenue this year. That, Lori Jordan said, is just a start.

“We’re not there yet,” she says, scooping up her 6-month-old granddaughter who’s been playing quietly nearby. “It’s all little steps.”