The “Mom” of Meadowbrooke

    Mother’s Day is just a few days away and I wanted to talk to you about the “mom” of Meadowbrooke Gourds.  She is very near and dear to my heart since she is my sister, Denise Bear. When I looked up the qualities of a mother, here are some of the adjectives that came up – loving, patient, knowledgeable, good sense of humor, hardworking, fun, nurturing and organized.

The word mom can mean different things to different people.  Sometimes it is your birth mom, sometimes mom is a stepmother, grandmother, aunt or even a family friend that you are very close to. Whoever mom is to you, they are special people that affect your life one way or another.

    Denise has been with Meadowbrooke Gourds in its infancy. She and her husband, Ben, founded Meadowbrooke Gourds back in 1995.  At that time, she had three children, two sons, ages 9 and 5 and one daughter, aged 1.  She had her hands full but still found time to help come up with designs, sizes, colors and setting up a new business.  One of our very first snowmen and snowmen baskets were painted white and then antiqued.  After this step, Denise spent countless evenings and weekends sitting in her basement at a card table to paint each and every face on the snowmen. In the first year, she painted over 11,000 faces on gourds.

    She homeschooled her oldest son for a few years when he was in middle school and one of his school projects was setting up our very first website under her direction. When Meadowbrooke began, we were strictly wholesale, and she would have been the voice at the end of the phone when customers called to place orders for the first five or so years.  She also helped to “computerize” our payroll system using a dial up internet, DOT Matrix printer and a DOS program.  For those of you who have no idea what any of these things are, that is probably a good thing.  Back then, there was no such thing as instant information.

    In 1999, she and her family moved to the farm on Potato Road after the completion of their home on top of the hill across the street from where the gift shop is now. Starting in the early 2000’s, we started hosting school field trips at the farm for kids to learn about farming and what you can do to a raw gourd. She would come down and conduct the tour through our production areas and also help each child complete a gourd project to take home as a souvenir.

 
    A few years later, due to health situations, she backed out a bit of the hands-on day-to-day operations of the business. Denise continued to help out in any capacity that she could from designing flyers, coming up with ideas for events and gourd designs and being part of the “eye” team which helped decide if a product needed some extra help or if it was ready to be introduced as a product.

    Thirty years after Meadowbrooke’s start, she can now be found on her hill taking care of her beautiful flower beds and gardens, tending to her chickens, cutting back trees, or being followed around by Karma, her Sheepadoodle.  But, most importantly, she is now Nanny to five adorable grandbabies, ages ranging from one to six that she watches almost every day of the week while the parents now work at Meadowbrooke Gourds.

    So, looking back at the qualities I found describing a mom, I’d say Denise put lots of love, hard work and patience into starting Meadowbrooke. She had to have a great sense of humor as there were lots of imperfect gourd designs and mistakes made along the way. But she also was very organized, nurturing and knowledgeable about how to make Meadowbrooke successful. All in all, I think Denise had a lot of fun, and this whole experience made her the very first 'mom' of Meadowbrooke Gourds.

 

Written by Dori Heller