The Middle Years (2008 - 2015)
This is the third installment in a series of blogs recounting how Meadowbrooke Gourds got started. We are lucky enough to be celebrating 30 years of crafting smiles, and we are taking a look over those years to show you where we started and how we got to the point where we are now. This blog will cover the middle years from 2008 until 2015 and then there will be one more coming in a few weeks to bring you up to 2025! If you missed the last two blogs, you could read them on our website at News – Meadowbrooke Gourds (dated 5/16/25 & 6/2/25).
In 2008, Ben (Meadowbrooke’s founder) decided to take a step back for a few years from the day-to-day operations and helped manage from afar. He still continued to do all of our farming. The day-to-day decisions and management was left to me (Dori), Darren (wholesale manager at the time) and Shawn (production manager at the time). This was very interesting as we learned to navigate running a business in a recession. People were concerned about spending money and although we would love to think everyone needs a gourd, we realized that a gourd was not a complete necessity of life. We did find out though that people still wanted to treat themselves a little and they still wanted their house to look nice so our smaller gourds with a lower price point was the way to go.
As retail continued to grow, we added more events and newspapers and magazines started to pick up stories about us. This helped us to get the Meadowbrooke Gourds name out to not only the locals but also to people from far away. It was around this time that we added silent auctions to our nightly events where customers would bid on one-of-a-kind gourds crafted from our employees while enjoying free hot dogs and a bonfire in the Fall or cheese and wine at Christmas time. By this time, we had also updated our accounting system, had a professional website going, had printed catalogs but had outgrown the area that held our gift shop.
One of the most exciting things to happen in 2008 is that Discovery Channel Dirty Jobs featuring Mike Rowe came to the farm to film an episode on our dirtiest jobs on the farm. He and his crew arrived early in the morning and filmed all day. This was an exciting time for all of us. We had sent in a video in 2003 to show what we did and how we did it, and it wasn’t until five years later we got the call that they wanted to come. This episode aired in December of 2008 and after that our name became known all over the country.
In 2009, we started selling raw gourds out of a pole building beside the gift shop. Customers loved to come and pick out the exact gourd they needed for their own gourd projects. The biggest problem was it wasn’t climate-controlled, so you froze in the winter, and it was very hot in the summer. As we got to know these customers and saw what they crafted, we decided to open up a small section in the store known as the local artist corner. These customers would bring in their gourds which we then sold on consignment for them. This made a really neat display because it was full of one-of-a-kind gourds, very different from what we sold, and everyone loved the added variety. One of these gourd crafters was a lovely local lady, named Wendy. She was one of the first gourd crafters that started teaching classes at our farm.
In 2012, Ben was ready to step back in and took the upgrades to the gift shop as a top priority. First, he redid the room that we used to call the cooler. Fun fact: our farm used to be a potato farm hence the name of the road we are on – Potato Road and this particular room was a giant cooler where the potato would be kept cold until they were sold. In 2013, he moved onto his next project which was to build a wall to separate what would become our shipping area and what would now be the gift shop, tripling it in size. This allowed us to carry more products besides gourds and to spread everything out. He was also the one that came up with the barn theme that is throughout the store and the cute little hut that houses the register area. It was in 2013 that I became the retail manager, and I absolutely love it!!!
One of the things we were asked about is how a gourd grows so we decided to do a time lapse video of gourd plants growing on one of our new cottages that we created and put across the street. It is our most watched video and is still watched and commented on today. Click here to watch our time lapse video.
As time went by, Ben and Denise’s children were getting older and decided they wanted to work at Meadowbrooke. Nathan came right out of high school (2008) to help on the farm, became our shipper and really went wherever he was needed. Brandon came home from the Army, went to college, got a job and decided working in an office was not for him and came back to the family business working in accounting and production (?). Ashley, who helped Ben come up with many, many gourd ideas while in high school, came home from college and became the apprentice farmer and quality control in production (2014). This information will be important for the next blog.
To be continued......