Open House

Hey there, everybody.  We just want to remind you about all the fun activities going on at Meadowbrooke Gourds during our Open House all during the month of October.  Every weekend has something for everyone and great family adventures.  First of all, throughout the month, weekdays as well as weekends, you can pick your own pumpkin and ornamental gourds.  These can make beautiful centerpieces and other decorations for the season.  Read all about our pumpkin patch in this previous post.

But get there early. They go fast!

Starting tomorrow – Oct. 1^st & 2^nd – is our much anticipated Oops! Sale.  You’ll get fantastic discounts on our beautiful gourds that have minor flaws and defects. (Many flaws you won’t even be able to tell, but they didn’t make our standards to be on the shelf.)  This weekend and the 30^th we have Gourd Painting classes as well!

Our Own Jack-o'-Edgar

Discover the artist in you on the second and third weekends – Oct. 8^th & 9^th and Oct. 15^th & 16^th – when you draw a design and we carve that exact drawing on a gourd to create your own unique Jack-o’-Lantern.  And here’s something special: At least one of the best of these will be featured in our 2011 catalog!  Your design may be sold nation-wide!

October 22^nd & 23^rd we will offer tours of or farm, Wagon Rides, and a special Customer Appreciation Sale.  You’ll get 25% off anything in our retail store.  Perhaps best of all is the bonfire on Saturday evening, featuring live music, an auction, and FREE hotdogs and soda.  Download the flier so you know what’s going on when. We’ll remind you, too, as each weekend approaches. If you’re not already a member of our Facebook Fan Page, we will be updating with pictures from our open house events! We are also running a Facebook contest throughout the month of October.

We hope to see you this weekend!

learnsomethingnewtoday.us

A turnip.  No, seriously.  It comes from an old Irish myth (Aren’t all myths old?  Are there any new myths?) about a guy named Stingy Jack and a none-too-bright, but quite trustworthy, Devil.  Here’s a link to one of the versions of the legend, and here’s another one, and there are many more.

The upshot is that Jack couldn’t get into either Heaven or Hell and was doomed to roam the dark of the night forever, with only a coal to light his way, which Jack carried in a hollowed-out turnip.  So, he became know as Jack of the Lantern, or Jack o’ Lantern. So, the first Jack o’ Lantern was not a pumpkin, or a gourd of any kind, but a turnip, which, we must assume, grew larger in those days.  They also used potatoes and beets, until they came to this country and figured out pumpkins were a lot easier to carve.  Of course, we here at Meadowbrooke Gourds make them out of gourds, like these.

All Hallow’s Eve was the Celtic New Year’s Eve. They believed that on that night, the veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead was

The Casper Family

quite thin, so the spirits could walk the earth then. The celebrations to appease the spirits turned into most of the Halloween customs of today.

By the way, the name “pumpkin” is derived from the French term for “large melon.”

Decorating for fall is one of the most exciting times of the year for us here at Meadowbrooke Gourds! Gourds & pumpkins are naturally a huge part of the season and we always try to come up with new and interesting ways we can craft our gourds and decorate our own homes.

Especially with the addition of our pumpkin patch this year, we have been searching out new, fun ways to decorate with pumpkins this fall! Of course, Jack O’ Lanterns are a must, but we found these great ideas from marthastewart.com for decorating with pumpkins in a unique way!

Pumpkin Pie Potpourri: Beautiful and functional! Cut off the top of a pumpkin and scrape out the innards; carve round vents with an apple corer. Rub cinnamon or pumpkin-pie spices onto the lid, or push cloves into it. With a lighted tealight candle inside, the pumpkin will give off a lovely fragrance for about six hours.

Starburst Pumpkin Sconces: These are so unique and lovely! Three perfectly round pumpkins are carved with a beautifully rendered

starburst pattern that is reminiscent of a Tiffany-style lamp. Then they are fitted with small scallop-edged tops and displayed on small bracket shelves. The elegant lights radiate softly, casting flickering shadows up the wall.  Martha Stewart has step-by-step instructions with photos on her website, which are simple and easy to follow. She also has a template for carving the scalloped edge.

Glittered Pumpkin Table Decorations: This stunning table display is easy to make and lasts longer than a Jack O’ Lantern. This project also works very well with decorative gourds! All you have to do is spread a layer of white glue over the surface of a small pumpkin with a paintbrush. (Place pumpkin on a paper plate or newspaper to catch excess glitter.) Then, sprinkle the glitter over the glue, covering it completely. Let the pumpkin dry for about an hour then shake off the excess. These pumpkins will keep for months!

If you have other pumpkin decorating ideas, we’d love to hear them!

Now that you’ve removed the skin and mold from your gourd, you have to decide what you want to do with it.  For most projects, you’ll need to cut it open, so that’s what we’re going to do now.  In an earlier post, we talked about some of the tools you might want to start accumulating, and a small saw or knife was one of them.  If you can get hold of woodworking tools, they’ll do well.  But as we said before, these are pretty inexpensive to buy.

This bottle gourd is going to be made into a bowl.*

To mark the gourd where you want to cut it, you’ll need to steady your hand.  Bricks, blocks, books, something like that will work well.  Build them to where you want to cut the gourd and rest your hand – which should be holding a pencil or marker – on it.  Then just rotate the gourd to draw the line around it.  The picture to the left shows the line being drawn to make a bowl.

You may want to wear a mask when cutting to avoid inhaling any dust or mold from the inside. It’s also not a bad idea to wear eye protection.  To protect and stabilize the gourd, set it on an old blanket or towel, or use a foam pad, like in the picture below.

A foam pad will help stabilize and protect the gourd as you cut.*

You might want to hold the gourd between your knees, but obviously, be very careful.  Now, cut a starter hole.  A sharp kitchen knife will do for this.  Somewhere just a hair above the line you’ve  drawn, press it through the gourd shell and cut a hole just big enough to get your blade in.  Then grab your saw or knife and start cutting with a sawing motion.

Now that your gourd is open, scrape out all the seeds and pulp. You can use anything that will scrape: a grapefruit spoon, oyster shell. Some pottery and leather working tools work well here.

* Pictures from Gourd Crafts, by Ginger Summit

Dried gourds at Meadowbrooke waiting to be cleaned!

So after meeting our Washroom Manager Roger in the last post, we’ve had numerous requests for some tips for cleaning gourds that you grew and dried yourself!
So here you go…

(Don’t worry, we will back track and post tips on growing and drying as well.)

1. Make sure the gourd is completely dry. It should weigh only ounces and sound hollow inside when you tap on the shell.  You may also hear seeds rattling inside when you shake the gourd. This is also an indicator that your gourd is ready for cleaning!

Who'd have thought something so beautiful could start out looking like this?

2. Put your gourd out in a good soaking rain for a few days or another option is to weigh down your gourd and completely submerge it in plain water for two days. Be careful about putting a lot of weight on the gourd, though.  One thing that works well is laying several water-logged towels over it.  That not only holds it down, but helps with the soaking process.

3. When it’s good and soaked, use steel wool or a wire brush to remove the skin. You don’t have to use much pressure most of the time.  In fact, try not to.  You don’t want to risk damaging the gourd, and it doesn’t take a whole lot of pressure to do that.  So, just let the abrasive surface itself do most of the work.  There may be spots that need a little more elbow grease, so go ahead and use it there, but do be careful. Use the dull edge of a butter knife for stubborn spots and wash until the surface is free of mold and blemishes.

Here’s another tip: Wear gloves.  The gourd will have mold on the skin, and you don’t want your skin to come into direct contact with that, especially if your skin tends to be sensitive, or if you know you are sensitive to mold.  Gloves aren’t a bad idea in any event, to protect your hands from slips with the brush/steel wool.

4. Once you have cleaned your gourds, keep dry and out of the weather until you are ready to craft it!

We hope these tips helped! Please feel free to ask us any questions about your gourd growing, drying, cleaning and crafting!

For our second employee spotlight, we’d like you to meet our Washroom Manager, Roger!

Briefly explain what you do at Meadowbrooke Gourds: Along with washing inside and outside the gourds, I am also a tour giver at Meadowbrooke. During open houses I also clerk in the store.

What do you like most about your job? People and flexibility.

Now the fun stuff…

Name on thing that not many people know about you: Don’t like being in large crowds.

Where is your favorite place in the world? Australia

What is your favorite movie? Remember the Titans

If you could meet anyone (dead or alive) who would it be? Wright Brothers

What music is playing in your car right now? Rock – ACDC

What is the weirdest thing you have ever eaten? Calamari

What do you do when you’re not at work? Coach baseball, Fleamarket and hunt

Favorite ice cream flavor: Chocolate

What is your favorite gourd? Any gourd that is easy to wash

Last year's Fall Open House Oops! Sale

October is so filled with activities for us here at Meadowbrooke Gourds and all of them are great family activities! Here are a couple highlights of what’s going on…

As part of our Fall Open House events, the first is our Oops! Sale on October 1^st and 2^nd, a Friday and Saturday.  It’s just what you’re probably thinking it is, items that have a

Oops! Sale photo

flaw so small you might not even notice it. But we do, so we won’t sell it as first quality.  We know many people who are familiar with us wait all year for this sale, so if you’re interested, it only happens twice a year!

We have painting classes on those days, too.  Class sizes are always limited, so signing up as soon as possible will ensure your spot!

Our large, lit Billy Jack

The following two weekends are Create-your-Own Jack O’Lantern events! You draw it and we’ll carve it into the gourd for you! Yours may even be judged the best, and you’ll appear in our 2011 catalog!

There are wagon rides, tours, auctions, live music, and various other activities throughout the month, and we’ll remind you of them as they get closer. Be sure to “like” us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to stay updated with our latest events and gourds. Fall is one of our favorite times of the year and we hope to see you out at the farm at one of our events!

Meadowbrooke Gourds pumpkin patch

It’s time to start getting excited about pumpkins again!  Fall decorating is not complete without pumpkins! Not to mention, Halloween will be upon  us sooner than you think, and we all need our jack o’ lanterns to scare away the restless spirits that prowl the night on All Hallows Eve.   The holiday has a truly fascinating history, and we will share some of that with you, but first things first.  You’ve got to get your pumpkin.

For the first time, this year we are offering you the chance to pick your own pumpkin!

And you won’t be picking from pumpkins piled up on tables and in boxes.  You’ll go out into our pumpkin patch and pick one right off the vine.  You can combine trips and pick a pumpkin at our Oops! Sale the first weekend in October.

The 2^nd and 3^rd weekends of the Open House would be perfect, too, since they’re Create your Own Jack o’ Lantern weekends.  Of course, those jack o’ lanterns will be made from dried gourds, like the martin and the bottle gourds, but still…

And you can’t beat the prices!  They’ll run about $1–6. Get each of your kids their own pumpkin!  Get one for the dog, too.

precolumbianwood.com

Before there was pottery and basketry, there were gourds.  Gourds were among the first containers, bowls, plates, and utensils ever made.  Yup, they’ve been around as long as toolmaking has.  In fact, pottery and basketry seem to be modeled after gourds.  Look at this pre Columbian-era pot.  Clearly, you can see the bottom of a bottle gourd in its shape, just like the raw, cleaned bowls we sell on our site and in our retail store.  And look at these dipper gourds.  They practically scream, “I’m a spoon!”

onaleeseeds.com

Now, you can say these are the most reasonable, serviceable shape for containers and that pottery would have developed this way even without the gourds to guide them.  And you may be right.  In which case, mega kudos to Nature for providing such a wonderful tool for us!  Just by cutting a little off here and there, early humans had ready-to-use bowls, cups, spoons, etc.  And

journalofantiques.com

the gourd was one – perhaps the – earliest cultivated crop.  That’s a pretty amazing history, don’t you think?

September Product of the Month - Autumn Luminary

Hello!  We hope you all had a wonderful weekend. By the way,  did you try that Watermelon Cake recipe we gave you for Labor Day?  Let us know what you thought of it.

The September Product of the Month is one of our luminaries.  You’ve probably seen others on our site.  They have leaf cut-outs and there’s a small light at the bottom.  You can see how pretty that looks.  The Product of the Month is a little different, it has acorn cut-outs, too, but it’s the same idea.

For you crafty types, a gourd luminary is something that you may want to try for yourself! A lot of ours are made from martin gourds.  You know, the ones that look like giant pears.  (They are also perfect for martin – and other small roosting birds – nests. More about that in a later post.)

Raw Martin Gourd

Raw Penguin Gourd

We also use penguin gourds for luminaries.  The martin might be easier for your first try, though, just because of its size.

Luminaries do not require a lot of artful decorating.  No complex painting, no adding on things like straw for hair, or putting parts of two gourds together, like our thistle feeders.  To put a finish on the gourd, you can use paint, or the kind of stains you get at a hardware store, or cream shoe polish, even wax, if you want to let the surface of the gourd shine through.  We’ll go into all that in more detail in an upcoming post.

The only other thing you need is a craft knife, and those are easy to find and inexpensive.  The ones with the retractable blade are not going to be as stable – and therefore, not as safe – as the fixed blade kind, like the ones to the left.

Fixed-Blade Craft Knives

And those are not that much more.  You can get really good ones for about $15.  There are  ergonomically designed knives, too.

So, this might make a good first project for you.  We’ll show you the details as we go along, but if you want to start right now, there are video tutorials online that can help you.  Or contact us and we’ll give you a hand. Also, we offer gourd crafting classes throughout the year! You design the shape, then our craftsmen will do the hard part and cut it out for you. The next classes will be our create your own Jack O’Lantern events!