The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Category: The Freckled Family

  • January Wrap Up!

    While it may seem like January should be a slow month for the business and farm that couldn’t be further from the truth. The holidays bring a constant stream…. or waterfall… of orders and no matter how much we prepare in the months before (starting in JUNE) we are always left with a greatly depleted stock of our goat milk soaps. Every January we are in a race to get our stock back up and because our soap takes six weeks to cure it can take us well into March to get to a comfortable level. However, with an exception of a few varieties, we have had enough to keep our costumers well stocked through the month of January… although, it’s always a nail biter watching and waiting for those cure dates to arrive. Luckily, this year has been an easier restock. We changed up how we do our production in order to be more efficient and it has allowed us to make a lot more soap than we were able to in the same time period last year.

    This month we discontinued our beeswax candles and essential oil rollers to make way for some products we are working on. The moment we made the announcement y’all flooded us with orders and we nearly sold out immediately. We have a few essential oil rollers and unscented candles hanging around but that’s it.

    January is also a busy time on the farm! We try to use this time to get projects done. As is the case for every farm… there are endless projects. We tackle them bit by bit as a family. I break things down into small bites and it seems less overwhelming. I find it is easier, and less frustrating, to get projects done when you don’t try to get it all done in one weekend.

    The (goat) girls are also getting quite large! They are all in the later stages of their pregnancies. We will have lots of baby goats bouncing around towards the end of February/beginning of March.

    Everyone seems to be loving our 365 project! We have been posting everyday, sharing little snips of our life, business, and farm. If you aren’t doing so already, follow us on all of our social medias to keep up with all of our posting – Facebook, Instagram, TikTok

    Finally, check out the video wrap up of our 365 project’s January postings. It turned out so lovely.

  • Ten Year Anniversary

    Earlier this month we celebrated the tenth anniversary of when we started The Freckled Farm Soap Company. This time ten years ago we were in the last stages of perfecting our goat milk soap recipe after a year of tiny tweaks and starting all of the paperwork to make our business official. We had the desire to create a high quality, eco friendly, affordable product but more than anything we had the desire to work and be together as a family.

    This anniversary is a huge milestone. While we hoped this is where the business would be ten years later we felt it was a long shot. We have gone through so many changes over the years and after our biggest change, during covid when we went from depending mostly on farmers markets for sales to depending on online sales, our customers adjusted and changed with us. We are forever grateful for those of you who have helped get us here.

    Thank you to all of you who have held us up and helped us grow over the last decade.

  • The Goat Milk in Our Goat Milk Soap

    The most important ingredient in our soap is obviously the goat milk from our own little dairy goat herd. It’s what makes our soap so special and it comes from the most spoiled goats!

    We have a wonderful, symbiotic relationship with the animals on our farm. Our goats give us this amazing, rich, fresh milk for our goat milk soap and we spoil them rotten. Our goats receive organic hay from a farm in Doswell, VA, non-GMO grain from a farm in Staunton, VA, kelp from the Arctic Ocean (because it is said to contain less mercury), black oil sunflower seeds and alfalfa pellets, ample pastures, and a nice solid barn. They get lots of love and attention. We keep our herd as small as possible so we can really monitor their health and so nothing goes unnoticed. We don’t take any chances with their health and consult our outstanding farm vet at the first sign that something might be wrong. We are closed herd, meaning our goats are not exposed to other goats or locations, and when people come to visit us we require they use the shoe wash so no foreign parasites or bacteria is introduced to our herd. We take our jobs as their caretakers very seriously and make sure we give them the best lives possible.

    You can feel comfortable using our soap knowing that the animals on our farm are treated with extreme love and care!

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  • A Reintroduction!

    We are The Freckled Farm Family

    We thought it might be a good time for an reintroduction. We are The Freckled Farm Family; Kevin, Crystal, Bryce, and Breckin. We are a small family owned business established in 2013. We are committed to making products that are not only better for our customers than our commercial counterparts, but also better for the environment. Our soaps are all natural and made with only the best quality ingredients. Our oils are organic and come from certified sustainable sources. We use high quality essential oils, and goat milk from our own dairy goat farm in Goochland, VA. We do not add any sulfates, parabens, or dyes. Each bar is made by hand every step of the way, from the milking all the way to the packaging! For us it’s all about family and we love that this business has allowed us to be together and to build something we can be proud of. We absolutely love what we do and we are so glad that we can share it with you!

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  • How we spend our off season…

    The idea of an off season is a bit of a joke at this point. There really isn’t a time of the year where things slow down for us. During the “busy” season Kevin and I work from the moment we wake up, until our heads hit the pillow around midnight. Kevin gets up before the sun rises to do the morning farm chores and when he gets in we all have breakfast together before starting our day. We hurry around making and packaging our goat milk soap, preparing for farmer’s markets and/or craft shows, returning emails and calls, writing blog posts, handling all of the different social media outlets, and of course running the farm. The farm itself is practically a full time job all it’s own. Between that soap business and photography business we easily work 90+ hours a week… each. We are literally working in some form or fashion all day long, seven days a week. We love what we do, so (most of the time) it doesn’t feel like work and we are able to be flexible when it comes to how our day is run. Then December comes to an end we are thrown into this strange “off season” where we only have one (potentially two) markets a week. We only have a handful of online orders come in a week. Weddings and portrait sessions are few and far between. You would think we could maybe sit back and relax now…

    The Freckled Farm Winter

    This time of year we only end up working around 60 hours a week each. Most of our farm chores are year round, so there really isn’t a big decrease in time there. While we don’t have to work in the garden or mow the lawn, most of the animal chores remain the same. We receive a small two month break from milking towards the end of the girls’ pregnancies, but they still eat on the milk stands, so instead of actively working during their feed time I usually spend that time talking to them and watching their baby bellies bounce around.

    This time of year our days are spent working on the projects that we had been putting off during the busy season. This includes doing repairs to the farm structures, preparing for babies, and finally getting to some of the farm projects that we wanted to do.

    When it comes to the soap company we spend the day/evening making batches of our goat milk soap, rebuilding our stock after being depleted during the holiday. This year we plan to (hope to) go into May, when markets open and business really starts to pick back up, with nearly three times more than what we had going into the start of the busy season last year. We also are using this time to work on several new soaps and even some entirely new products! We plan to go into the busy season running!

    Organization is the key this time of year. During the busy season things get tossed around. The shipping station looks like a storm blew through it. Everything in the office is scattered about. Each year we try to prefect our organization strategy a little more, to make things easier on ourselves the rest of the year, but as the business grows we are constantly having to reassess. We have put a lot of thought and effort into the new system that we are implementing this year, hopefully it will make things go smoothly once we hit May.

    We do try to give ourselves a little bit of a break during the winter though. We generally give ourselves the day “off” on Saturdays after the markets are over. This doesn’t mean we get to spend the whole afternoon and evening relaxing, because that is just not possible on a farm, but it does mean that computers stay off. Also, instead of working until midnight every other night we usually call it day between 8-10pm. I would love to be able to stop working earlier, but so much of the morning is dedicated to homeschool activities and using the little bit of the winter daylight to get things done around the farm. The “inside” work often gets pushed back to when it is dark.

    Come the end of March we will have babies all over the place and that’s a busy season all it own. We have seven goats due to kid and we should be getting fourteen to twenty one kids from them, all of whom will be bottle fed for 8 weeks. We have baby chicks coming to us via USPS around the same time. We will hopefully have piglets sometime in April (although we can not confirm if Myrtle is pregnant yet). Let’s not forget the garden! During all of this the 2016 garden will be going in! New life will be everywhere. It’s a really wonderful time of year to be on a farm.

    It’s a busy life, but we love it (so much!), and are incredibly grateful that we get to work side by side and spend our days together.

  • The Freckled Farm’s Support Team

    If you follow us at all you have heard plenty about “The Freckled Farm Family” which includes Kevin, me, and our two children Breckin and Bryce, but the truth is we wouldn’t be where we are today without our support team. This wonderful group of people are who make our lives easier and allow us to grow our business. We are incredibly grateful for them, so we thought it was time to honor them!

    This is who you are likely used to seeing… The Freckled Farm Family – Crystal, Kevin, Breckin, and Bryce:

    The Freckled Farm Family - The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    Now Meet Our Support Team!

    The Freckled Farm Support Team - The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    Ashley

    Ashley is our “farm hand” (farm sitter… whatever you want to call her) and quite frankly I don’t know what we would do without her. Farms run like clockwork. Regular farm chores are twice a day exactly twelve hours apart. The animals come to rely on our punctuality to be fed, and when it comes to milking, their comfort. For my breastfeeding mommas out there you know exactly how it feels to go too long between “milkings.” So everyday at 5am and 5pm we do farm chores, which includes; feeding the animals, changing out their water, mucking the enclosures, and of course milking the does. This can occasionally pose a problem. It’s not always possible to be at the farm right at farm chore time. We may have a craft show, market, a wedding for the photography business, or family event that gets us home later than 5pm. Sometimes we even like to get a weekend away… imagine that! This is where Ashley steps in. When we aren’t going to be at the farm at farm chore time she comes and takes care of the farm for us. She knows exactly how to run the farm and can step right in, in case of an emergency. It’s extremely comforting to know that I have back up to take care of my animals in a pinch. She knows the animals by name, and knows them well enough to be able to tell if something is off, so we have another set of eyes on our herd. We trust her (which is saying a lot when it comes to our farm, which is our home, our livelihood, and a part of our heart) and love her! She deals with our tornado of craziness and we are so grateful for her!

    I highly recommend (obviously) Ashley’s farm and pet sitting services. Contact me for her information.

    The Freckled Farm Support Team - The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    Lauren

    Lauren and I have been friends since we were fourteen years old. She has been a support system for me long before the farm, so the work she does for us is really only the beginning, but that’s all I am going to highlight here. Lauren was one of the first soap testers. Her and her parents were part of the group who gave us feedback that helped us to develop the recipe that we use today. Lauren also was our very first booth sitter. When we started out we had one booth set up, so we would only commit to one location at a time. We quickly realized that we needed to be able to expand to do two locations at a time. This was easy enough with Kevin and me, but the demand continued to grow and we needed someone who would be able to run a third booth or to run a booth when one of us were unable to attend one of our regular locations or to help when we were in very busy locations. Lauren was of course the first person we thought about. She’s a great salesmen and works so hard for us! We love you Lauren.

    The Freckled Farm Support Team - The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    Ashley (the other Ashley) and Mike

    Ashley and I have been friends since college. We have always been a great support system for each other. Years ago Ashley offered to run booths for us if we ever needed anyone. As the business expanded, as did the need for her help. Ashley and her husband Mike are hustlers! They can sell goats milk soap like it’s nobody’s business!! It’s comforting to know they are working for us. After Ashley worked a recent holiday craft market for us I had the vendors who were set up around her send me messages making sure I knew how hard she worked. Vendor friends are always commenting about how awesome our booth sitters are!

    The Freckled Farm Support Team - The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    Clairee and CC

    CC is my brother and Clairee is my soon-to-be sister-in-law (that a lot of hyphens). Like all of our other booth sitters they are incredibly hard workers. Sometimes I will set outrageous sales “hopes” and they will work their butts off to reach it and in some cases exceeded it. They played an huge role in our record sales day this past December. It’s often hard to find salesmen who are as passionate about selling your product as you are, and somehow we we lucked into three different families who are willing to sell our soaps as if they made them themselves. It’s a rare gift and one of the reasons we are so incredibly grateful.

    Moms

    Cindy and Patty

    These are our mothers! Beyond the motherly support that they provide they have babysat countless hours for free. While I know they do this because they love us and the kids, and are looking for an excuse to be around their grandchildren, it is still beyond helpful for us. Taking the children to certain craft shows is just out of the question and the moms step right in and take care of things at home. It’s hard leaving your children but knowing they are in good care makes it easier for us to concentrate on selling soap.

    We are so grateful to have these people in our lives. Without them we wouldn’t be where we are today.

  • Happy Birthday Breckin!

    Today our amazing farm boy turns 6!

    6 years old?! How is that even possible!? My sweet boy, you made us parents. You changed our lives. You made our world brighter and happier than we could have ever imagined. You are the most amazing little man. You baffle me everyday… I can’t get over how smart you are. You are also so loving, and compassionate. You are the best big brother out there! Bryce is lucky to have you. We are so proud of you. You are going to do amazing things! We love you more than you can imagine. Happy Birthday my love.

  • Richmond Family Magazine

    If you are shopping around Richmond pick up a Richmond Family Magazine. They are free and can be found near the door of stores like Kroger and Food Lion. This month there is an article in which we are featured! It’s a great article about mom and pop businesses around RVA. We speak about being a couple and running our two business, The Freckled Farm Soap Company and Neilson-Hall Photography. We are so excited and honored to be a part of it.

    Richmond Family Magazine - The Freckled Farm Soap Company - Mom and Pop Shops

  • Bryce’s Favorite Soap

    For the longest time Bryce used our Castile Goat Milk Soap because she had incredibly sensitive skin. If her clothes or sheets were not washed in a free and clear detergent she would break out in a horrible rash. She was able to use our Castile without any issues, so for her first year and a half of life that is what she used. We started testing small areas of her skin at around eighteen months and she never had a reaction to our soaps, even though she was still reacting to things like laundry detergent. She was able to use our full line of soaps without a problem, so we started to allow her to pick out her own soaps from the reject drawer (the drawer of soaps that have flaws or didn’t make weight that we can’t sell). She loves smelling the soaps, so it is always a treat for her to pick out a new one. Her favorite soap to use is the Sunrise Citrus. She absolutely loves the scent!

    If you are interested in trying our Sunrise Citrus Goat Milk Soap or our Castile you can find them here.

  • Breckin’s Favorite Soap

    Breckin had a hard time picking a favorite soap. He kept saying he loves them all! However, when we put them all in front of him and asked him to pick one he picked Lemongrass Green Tea as his favorite. He likes the fact that it is green (naturally colored by the green tea) because it is his favorite color. He also loves the way that it smells. Although, he wants it stated that he really does love them all!

    If you are interested in trying out our Lemongrass Green Tea Goat Milk Soap yourself you can find it here!