Nebraska products on sale for holidays
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By NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star
You can combine Christmas generosity with Nebraska patriotism by picking presents grown, made or manufactured at home.
Grow Nebraska, a nonprofit marketing and training service for small Nebraska-based businesses, can help, with a catalog — both in print and online — and with holiday stores that will open on Thursday in Lincoln and Omaha.
“Our mission is awareness and promotion of Nebraska’s entrepreneurial and small businesses,” said CEO Janell Anderson Ehrke.
A Grow Nebraska holiday store will open in Lincoln on Thursday in the Westfield Gateway mall, next to Applebee’s.
Other holiday stores will open on Thursday in Omaha’s Oakview Mall and in Norfolk at Nebraska Creations, inside Sunset Plaza Mall at 1700 Market Lane.
The From Nebraska Shop at 803 Q St. in the Haymarket sells many products from Grow Nebraska members, along with other products that have Nebraska connections.
A Grow Nebraska Store is open year-round in Kearney at Hilltop Mall.
A full listing of retail stores that are members of Grow Nebraska or that carry members’ products is available at www.grownebraska.com.
These are businesses started in an extra bedroom, the kitchen and the garage.
Grow Nebraska got started in 1998 with 51 businesses. It uses membership fees, donations and state and federal grants to help members market their products.
Membership is at an all-time high, Ehrke said, at 217.
That amounts to 217 stories of Nebraskans with a dream.
Wingsets Aromatherapy, Lincoln
When Bell South was looking for an insect repellent to protect employees putting up telephone lines in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the company ordered about 1,800 bottles of Ann Wooledge’s all-natural product, Bugz Off.
It was her biggest order, ever.
“My husband and I stayed up for three or four days getting the bottles ready to send. We were used to 10 to 20 bottles a day,” she said.
Wooledge created one of her products — a natural lotion for sore bottoms — for her granddaughter. She has called it Beautiful Baby Bottom, Hemp Emu Oil, and now Shea Mango Butter Balm.
But Wooledge, who recently gave up her nursing job in Lincoln to devote herself full time to her business, is thinking about renaming the product again.
When her granddaughter asked for the soothing lotion, she would say, “Nanny’s cream, Nanny’s cream.”
Stained Glass Expressions, Auburn
Marcie Gren’s business grew out of a class she had taken in Auburn about seven years ago. Looking for something a little different, she created a line of funky stained-glass sun catchers, primarily cats and dogs, that Gren says are little cheery symbols of innocence.
This year, she’s been busy with computer and Internet design classes and hasn’t stocked up for Christmas. But her funky pets are available online, at Lincoln’s Oh So Art Gallery, 137 S. Ninth St., and the Omaha Grow Nebraska holiday store.
Good Sip Coffee Co., Lincoln
Raised in a heavy coffee-drinking family, Tom Wheeler started roasting his own beans five years ago.
He developed a business proposal in a graduate school entrepreneurial class and, with his sister Amy Snodgrass, turned the plan into reality: a company that offers chemical-free, environmentally friendly coffee.
Good Sip imports only those coffees that have been certified organic and follow national organic program rules.
That means the coffee beans, roasted in Lincoln, are grown without pesticides and herbicides, Wheeler said. Instead, the coffee is generally grown around forests, where birds control the pests that pester the plants, Wheeler said.
The new company imports bean from 14 countries, makes a coffee that is decaffeinated by the Swiss water process and offers chemical-free flavored blends.
The company’s top seller is Nebraska Blend, a Colombian and Guatemalan mix roasted to a medium dark, Wheeler said.
The business is growing, but Wheeler has kept his day job in software development.
Blomenberg Studio, Seward
Susan Blomenberg had a lot of medicine bottles around after her husband’s heart attack more than a decade ago — so she used them for her first papier mache sculptures.
Today, she makes her Santas and witches and other figures on empty vinegar bottles and wine bottles, most given to her by friends.
“I’m a good recycler.”
Blomenberg makes maybe 50 such creations a year as a hobby, stopping in December to enjoy the holiday season.
“It’s not a moneymaker,” she says.
Big Red Popcorn, Schuyler
These little ears of corn that will pop before your eyes in the microwave are pure Nebraska.
Galen and Diana Kehrli get their seed stock from Nebraska popcorn producer B.K. Heuermann and grow the corn on their property near Schuyler.
They hire local children to hand-pick the corn because a mechanical picker is too severe, they say.
Galen Kehrli stores the corn in mesh bags in the garage. “It has to be totally mice proof because mice love it,” he says.
Then the couple, sometimes with help from friends, spend evenings folding the little bags that will be used for popping.
One evening a week, his in-laws help clean the corn and get it ready to be vacuum sealed, then deliver the product to Omaha and Lincoln.
The novelty product is sold in more than 30 stores, and the corn makes its way across the United States as gifts.
Galen Kehrli recently got an order for 100 bags from American military members stationed in Kuwait to be used as stocking stuffers for schoolchildren. He also recently got a call from a California hospital gift shop interested in stocking the corn.
The Kehrlis sell about 20,000 ears a year, but it’s still a part-time job.
“This is kind of a sideline,” he says. “My wife and I both work in town full time.”
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com
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