Celebrating Motherhood

The crucible of motherhood is what made Butterfly Bakery of Vermont what it is today.

I started Butterfly Bakery of Vermont when I was just a year out of college and 11 years before I became a mom. For all of those 11 years BBVT was a micro company with just a single owner-employee and occasional helpers. But when I became a mom I realized that I couldn’t do all the things for BBVT by myself (especially during maternity leave!). So I hired my first regular employee. That stressful early “longest-shortest time” forced me to take a 1/2 step away from my business and think about what my business actually needed, instead of just how many cookies I needed to bake that day.

And clearly, what my bakery needed was hot sauce.

I mean, yes, strange pivot. But that breathing room of having an employee allowed me to be creative and hot sauce came from that creativity. I made choices that I never would have made if I didn’t need to support an employee and a growing family. I needed to respond to what customers wanted to grow the company. And customers wanted hot sauce.

In the earliest days of their lives, both of my kids spent lots of time at the bakery. Usually napping in a carrier on me while I made cookies or hot sauce. Now that my kids are nearing 9 and 11, they are finally able to pull their own (light) weight. When things get busy the whole family troops down to the cannery on the weekend to label hot sauce and caramel. But just by existing they helped form the company into the one that we know and love today.

To all the mothers out there - mothers in all their forms - thank you for being you. It can be complicated, but the world is better for having mothers in it.