The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Category: The Freckled Family

Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Hillary Clinton

Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Every Friday I will introduce you to another part of The Freckled Farm. This week you have a chance to get to know Hillary Clinton!

On The Freckled Farm our animals are named by themes. The llamas are named after mountains, the chickens are named after 80s and 90s sitcom characters, and our goats are named after strong, intelligent women that we love and admire.

Oh my sweet Hillary. She is so loving, so affectionate, so intelligent, and a true attention hog. Hillary follows me around the pasture as I do farm chores, anything to get some attention. She has such a sweet, calm personality (except at feeding time) that most of our visitors fall in love with Ms. Hillary instantly. People also love her beautiful white freckled ears. When we moved the baby goats into the pasture a few weeks ago instead of pushing them around, like Tina did, she explored them with gentle curiosity. Don’t get me wrong, if they were in her way she would let them know, but is was with a gentle push instead of an aggressive head butt. She is our sweet girl. We love her so much.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

September 13, 2013
Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Tina Fey

Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Every Friday I will introduce you to another part of The Freckled Farm. This week you have a chance to get to know Tina Fey!

On The Freckled Farm our animals are named by themes. The llamas are named after mountains, the chickens are named after 80s and 90s sitcom characters, and our goats are named after strong, intelligent women that we love and admire.

I am starting with Tina Fey because she is the alpha. All herds have them and Tina is ours. She is truly a “Bossy Pants.” She bosses everyone around… Well not me, but that’s not from lack of trying.

When the barn was complete and the fencing was in progress I began to look for a farm that had a few available yearlings. We hadn’t planned on getting goats until spring, but with the farm structures coming to completion I wasn’t willing to wait any longer. I searched for a while but most of the local farms had already sold off any available goats that spring. I finally found a farm not far from us that had eight doelings from two different breedings for us to pick from. I knew there was no way that I would go and not find at least two goats that I liked, so it really started to sink in that the goats we saw that day would be the start of our farm. On the drive there Kevin and I discussed how we would know which goats to get. I had waited my whole life for this day (no exaggeration), so I wondered if I would just know which goats were ours or if it would solely be an educated decision based on the goats structure and the history of the dam and sire. We had visited several farms that year and even had reservations to get 2 kid does in the spring, but we had never had the experience of going to a farm and saying “We will take those two,” so the excitement that surrounding this farm visit was very different than in the past. We got to the farm and the owner walked us through the property. We walked passed the dog pen, the buck kid pen, the big buck pasture, and up to the adult doe pasture. She pointed towards the pasture where the doelings were. I looked over and there they were, standing up against the fence and there was one doe who just struck me. It was like she was lit up. I knew she was mine. That goat was Tina.

When we first brought Tina home she was a goof ball. She would prance and hop around the pasture, but as we continued to add animals and it was no longer just her and Hillary she began to show a dominate side. She still has her goofy moments, but she rules the roost and is quite serious most of the time. She may be a bossy one, but towards me she is loving and affectionate… sometimes aggressively so. She has dimples near her mouth that make it look like she is always smiling. We love her… bossiness and all.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

September 6, 2013
Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Bryce

Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Every Friday I will introduce you to another part of The Freckled Farm. This week you have a chance to get to know Bryce!

Bryce, our youngest (1 year), has a real way with animals. They love her. She is too young to really help out with farm chores, but she brightens the experience for everyone as she giggles and “talks” to the goats and chickens.

She has a smile that lights up the room and you can tell by her photographs that she is quite a ham. She is the comedian of the family. She really loves to make people laugh. If you laugh at something she does be prepared to see it 100 more times. She’s brilliant, happy, charming, loving, and beautiful… inside and out.

I am so excited to watch her grow and to see how she finds her place on this farm.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

August 30, 2013
Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Breckin

Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Over the next few months I will introduce you to a different part of The Freckled Farm every Friday. This week you have a chance to get to know Breckin!

This photograph was taken a year ago, but is still one of my favorite Breckin “farm” pictures.

Breckin, our oldest (3 years), is a true farm kid. His main job around the farm, aside from being a kid, is to help care for the animals, specifically the chickens. One of my favorite parts of the day is watching Breckin put the chickens back into the coop before we go in for the evening. We have trained the chickens to respond to a specific call (“Coop Coop!”), when they hear the call they come running from all corners of the farm. They hop in the coop and Breckin spreads black oil sunflower seeds on the coop floor for them. I love to hear him walking through the yard calling them as he shakes his cup of seeds. He calls them by name if they are being slow and counts them before closing them up for the night.

Breckin is also a great help in the garden. He will help me pull weeds, but I have to watch him closely because sometimes he will get ahead of himself and start pulling everything in sight. He loves to water the plants and watching as they grow (he even measures the plants). Many veggies he wont eat unless they come out of our garden, like cucumbers.

Breckin has been known to create mud puddles to play in, to strip down to his underwear in order to run through the hose, to build with any material he can get his hands on. He is so proud of his farm, his animals, and his family. He is the best big brother and son of all time, and he is so incredibly loved.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

August 23, 2013
Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Kevin

Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Over the next few months I will introduce you to a different part of The Freckled Farm every Friday. This week you have a chance to get to know Kevin!

(Bryce is only 4 months old in this picture… Isn’t she precious? Who doesn’t love a chunky baby?)

Kevin is the soap maker extraordinaire. We brainstorm together, but he is the one who researches how to make it happen. He designs soap recipes with care, considering what each oil does to improve the quality of the soap and how it affects the user’s skin. He is always searching for a way to make the soap better and is a true perfectionist.

Kevin and I met while attending VCU School of the Arts. Our relationship has truly been a journey. He is a loving, supportive husband and father. He is my best friend, my partner, and my love. We are a great team and I am so glad we are going through this journey together.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

August 16, 2013
Getting to Know The Freckled Farm – Crystal

Want to know more about the farmers, animals, and buildings on The Freckled Farm? Over the next few months I will introduce you to a different part of The Freckled Farm every Friday. I am starting with myself because it seems like the most logical place to start.

Hello! I’m Crystal. I play many roles here on The Freckled Farm. Aside from my normal motherly and household duties I am the one who keeps us organized, cares for the animals, tends our garden, writes most of the blog posts, assists in the soap making, and handles as much marketing as possible. I’m the planner of the family. It’s just a part of my personality… the lists… where would I be without my lists?

I graduated with a BFA in Photography from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in 2006. I run my own photography business (Website) where I photograph portraits and weddings throughout Virginia. I spend most of my time with my children. They are my whole world and I feel incredibly lucky to have a career that allows me to do most of my work from home so I can be with them.

The Freckled Farm has been a dream of mine since I was a child. It has grown from the desire to have goats as pets to a full self-sustaining dairy goat farm. We continue to grow and dream and I can’t wait to see where this all takes us.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

August 9, 2013
How The Freckled Farm Got It’s Name

Freckles are a common theme around here. We use the word “Freckled” for almost everything and I am sure people wonder where our obsession comes from… Well here’s the story

Long before the farm was set up we talked about what we would name it. We wanted the name to have meaning and somehow connect to/represent our family. We had the name Breckin picked out for our son years before he was even conceived. I actually saw the name and liked it before I had even met Kevin! One night when discussing our future family we looked up the meaning of the name and found out that it meant “Freckled.” Being freckled myself it seemed like the perfect choice for my future son.

A month or so before conceiving our daughter Bryce I started scouring all of the baby websites looking for names. We already had a boy name picked. It was the girl name that we couldn’t come to an agreement on. I knew I wanted a BR name but nothing really stood out. I kept returning to the name Bryce. I liked the sound of it with Breckin, so I decided to look up the meaning to see if I could convince Kevin that, that should be the name if we were to have a little girl. Well, you can image how excited I was to find out that Bryce meant Freckled (or Speckled depending on the site you look at) as well! There were no more arguments. If we were to have a girl her name would be Bryce… Luck would have it we found out in Nov 2011 that we were having a baby girl.

So picking the farm’s name came easy after that… The Freckled Farm was only fitting.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

August 7, 2013
Why Soap?
“Do you make cheese?” This is THE question people ask when they find out we have a diary goat farm and when we tell them no (at least not to sell), that we make goat milk soap they generally look at us puzzled. No one can seem to understand why we would rather make soap than delicious goat cheese. Well there are a number of reasons we made this decision:
1. Creativity – Kevin and I are both artists. In fact, we met while attending VCU School of the Arts, where we were both working towards photography degrees. While I am sure there are plenty of creative things that you can do with cheeses we felt that soap would really allow our creativity to shine. The possibilities are endless and we would be able to expand the business into a huge assortment of natural body care products.
2. Soap’s lifespan – Our goal is for our farm to help financially support us throughout the year. Soap lasts a long time and you don’t have to worry about short expiration dates. This way we can sell at the same pace year round and if we don’t sell all of our product at a market one week it can go with us to the market the next. At some point we will have the breeding staggered to the point where we are never without fresh milk, but until that happens we can still run our business even when our girls are near the end of their pregnancies and not milking because the milk is frozen and the soap lasts.
3. Our commitment to natural and raw – It’s easy to have our soaps natural and raw. We use raw milk, we use essential oils never synthetic fragrances, and we never use artificial dyes. With cheese it’s a little harder. Unless your cheese is aged a certain number of days you are not allowed to use raw milk, so any soft cheeses have to be made with pasteurized milk. We are passionate about raw milk around here and have no desire to pasteurize.
4. Facilities – The soap making requires pretty minimal facilities. To have a true dairy operation you have to have specific facilities and go through a process of inspections. While I don’t have a problem going through the hoops needed to make our business legit, the costs of building the cheese facilities is no where in our budget… especially an aging room.
5. Product Quality – After using our soap you will understand. Goat milk soap is superior. We are proud to have the opportunity to make such an awesome product.
6. Passion – Kevin and I both are very visually driven. We are extremely excited about making beautiful soaps, packaging, etc, and while we consider ourselves foodies and are very passionate about eating healthy and well, we don’t have a passion for cheese. I could sit and look through soap recipes, read books about soap, and browse images of beautiful soap on Pinterest all day long.
Soapmaking is just a better fit for our family, lifestyle, and personalities. I hope that after using our soap people understand why we are so passionate about it!

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com
August 5, 2013
Our Story

The story of how the Neilson-Hall Family and The Freckled Farm came to be:

I have always been drawn to farms. I love animals, especially goats, and the idea of peace and quiet is very attractive, but I could have never envisioned we would be where we are now… 29 and 30 years old, two children, dairy goat farm with a menagerie of animals, living in the middle of no where. We always talked about living on a farm, but not until retirement. We had big things to accomplish before we finally settled down in the country but here we are…

Many, many years ago, when Kevin and I were dating, we would talk about our future… We had big plans of big city living. I was going to have a fashion/photojournalistic photography career. Kevin was going to be a sound engineer and do live sound. We would have big important careers. Isn’t this what all people enter adulthood thinking they want? After I graduated from college Kevin and I moved to Philadelphia (from Richmond, VA) and got our first dose of reality. During our 8 months in Philly we encountered a lot of bad luck… A LOT of bad luck. We were planning our wedding, renovating an old house in South Philly, Kevin was working for a production company, and I was trying to build a photography business. I wont go into all the details of the difficult things that happened to us during our stint in Philly, that would take a book, but after only 8 months we were done. We were ready for a drastic life change.

A few months before our wedding we put our house on the market and decided to move up our “retirement plans.” We had started to think about children and we were considering the best location to raise them. I had always figured I would raise my children right outside of a city, the way I grew up, but that wasn’t what I wanted anymore. It all became very clear that the best place to raise our children would be in the country. Luckily we sold our house in three months. We moved back to Virginia, rented a house in the country to make sure we could handle living so far away from everything, and began looking for our farm.

Shopping for a farm gave us our second dose of reality… There was no way we could afford the farm we envisioned. The dream of rolling hills, and a big white farm house was out of reach. We decided we just needed to find a house with a little bit of land and make it work. We searched for months, but never found anything that really screamed “home.” Finally, I came across a listing for a house in Western Goochland. It seemed too far away from Kevin’s work, but it was in our price range and the ad said it was a little farm and to “bring your horse.” So, one Saturday afternoon we drove out to check the property. It was very difficult to find, but once we did it was obvious that the listing took some liberties. The house was precious, but the property was in no way a farm. It was a house sitting on some acreage. No barn, no fencing, the only outbuildings were a shed and lean-to. I saw the potential though. We called our agent and asked to get a viewing the next weekend. When we finally got to see inside the house it was like we were coming home. We ran through the house like we were children at Disney. It had everything we wanted. It was loaded with character. This was our home. We were just going to have to make it a farm on our own.

Long story short, we got the house and spent the next 4 years slowly fixing “issues” with the house. We also spent those 4 years dreaming and making big plans for the farm. We wanted a dairy goat farm that supply would our family with all it’s dairy needs and a goat milk soap company that would help financially support the farm and our family. We talked about it for years, but were afraid to pull the trigger. The barn was going to be a large cost, the fencing was going to be a lot of work, and we were in the process of building our family. How was I going to milk goats with a baby?

Shortly after moving into our house I got a job teaching art at the high school. I wasn’t sure I would be able to run a farm, a family, and teach. It was a lot to juggle. I had already let go of my photography business when our first was born, because it was too much to handle with all my other responsibilities. I was beginning to get frustrated. I just wanted my farm and I wasn’t sure how we were going to make it happen. Our dreams of having a small diary goat farm with a goat milk soap company had grown into a dream of having a full self-sustaining farm that could support nearly all of our family’s food needs, and hopefully one day our energy needs. In 2011 I was pregnant with our second and it became obvious to us that this was the time to make our move. We had been saving up for our barn for years and we finally had the money. After a great deal of discussion we decided that when our daughter was born I would leave my teaching position, reopen my photography business (Neilson-Hall Photography), start homeschooling our son his preschool, and begin building our farm.

Everything started moving at lightening speed. Our daughter Bryce was born April 2012, the chickens moved in June 3rd, the barn went up in August, the fencing went up in September, the goats came to live with us in November, the llamas came to live with us in February 2013, two new baby goats joined us in June 2013, and here we are.

We have spent time perfecting our recipes and getting the soap to the point that we are proud to sell it and have it represent our farm and family. We hope that you love it as much as we do.

I hope you enjoy following along in our journey as we continue to build our farm, our business, and work on becoming self-sustaining.

The Freckled Farm Soap Company makes handmade goat milk soaps. Our body care products are all natural and made with love. For more information about our products and to read more about the farm please visit our website: www.thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com

August 1, 2013