The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Tag: Goat Milk Soap

  • Our Goat Milk Soaps are Going Organic!

    That’s right! Towards the end of last year, when trying to figure out how we were going to promote further growth and continue to make our goat milk soaps better for our customers and the environment, we decided to take the leap and switch over to nearly all organic oils!

    We now will only have two oils within our soaps that are not organic, both of which are among the lesser oils we use in our soap recipes and neither of these oils are used at all in our Castile Goat Milk Soap. So lets talk numbers. That means 88% of the oil portion of the recipe for the vast majority of our soaps is now organic and the oil portion of our Castile Goat Milk Soap is 100% organic.

    All that’s left is the goat milk. Our farm is not certified organic, because it is a costly certification to obtain and maintain, however we implement every organic practice we can. Our all-natural non-gmo feed comes from a local farm and our hay, also from a local farm, is chemical free. Like us, both of these farms have not gone through the organic certification process, but employ organic practices. We avoid all chemical pesticides on our farm, even in the areas where the goats are not allowed to roam. We implement as many natural remedies for ailments as we can, and when medications are required we exceed the recommended milk withdrawal time. You can feel confident that our milk is of the highest quality!

    What’s the best part of all of this? You are getting access to soap that is now   even better for you and the environment than before and the prices will remain the same! You heard right! We will not raise our prices with this change to our soap line. Enjoy!

  • Best Soaps for Valentines Day

    Valentines day is this weekend. Which soaps make the best gifts for the person you love?

    Rose Goat Milk Soap

    Why give her roses that will last a few days then wilt away, when you can give her our Rose Goat Milk Soap. With this soap she can bathe in the subtle floral scent of rose over and over again. It’s adorned with deep red rose petals and ground rose petals throughout, giving the soap a beautiful speckled look. It makes a lovely gift.

    Find our Rose Goat Milk Soap Here

    Lavender Goat Milk Soap

    Our Lavender Goat Milk Soap is another one of our soaps that allows you to give the one you love flowers that they can enjoy for far longer than the real thing. Lavender is also a scent that is associated with relaxation and what’s a better gift than one that allows the recipient to sit back and de-stress.

    Find Our Lavender Goat Milk Soap Here

    Rosewood Salt Goat Milk Soap

    This pretty pink bar of soap allows the one you love to pamper themselves and visually it makes a great companion for both the lavender and rose soaps. Together these soaps would make the perfect valentines gift.

    Find our Rosewood Salt Goat Milk Soap Here

    Have a wonderful Valentines day! 

  • What’s in our Soap Dish – February

    It’s time to continue our “What’s in our Soap Dish” series! Read on to find out which of our goat milk soaps are in our soap dish this month!

    Lavender Goat Milk Soap

    This time of year I am finally starting to get into the swing of Winter. A lot of the rush to organize and rebuild our stock after the busy season is starting to ease up and we begin to get into the groove of the Winter routine. I try to make myself take breaks and relax because once the busy season starts relaxation will be a thing of the past. Lavender is a great scent for relaxation and it brings about visions of spring during the blistering days of winter.

    You can find our Lavender Goat Milk Soap Here

    Cedarwood Goat Milk Soap

    This soap scent is very nostalgic for me. Its warm earthy fragrance reminds me of my great grandmother’s old quilt. It’s the perfect soap to invoke those cozy memories when it’s cold and dreary outside.

    You can find our Cedarwood Goat Milk Soap Here

    Enjoy our February picks! Use these soaps to relax you and conjure up visions of spring and memories of warmth. Check back next month to see what’s in our soap dish for March!

  • Best Soap for Men

    We continue with our “Best Soap for…” series, this time we are highlighting the best goat milk soaps for Men.

    Many men have no issue picking out soaps for themselves from the varieties that we bring to the markets, but occasionally we will get a gentleman who comes up to our booth and asks “Do you have any man soaps.” While we don’t have any soaps that are specifically made for men we do have scents that are more masculine or at least would be appealing to both males and females.

    Cedarwood Goat Milk Soap

    Our Cedar Goat Milk Soap is the closest thing we have to a “man soap.” When we discovered what an amazing shave bar our Castile Goat Milk Soap was we decided we needed to make a shave soap that was geared more towards men. The Cedar has a woody scent and the same lotion-like lather of the Castile, making it the perfect bar for shaving your face.

    You can find our Cedarwood Goat Milk Soap HERE

    Rosewood Salt Goat Milk Soap

    Our Rosewood Salt soap is one of our top sellers to men… surprisingly. It’s our little pink bar of soap, but men really seem to love it! It too has a woody scent and has the additional benefit of being an exfoliant. Once wet it develops a texture much like a pumice stone. Many of our male customers seem to like the combination of the rough texture and earthy scent.

    You can find our Rosewood Salt Goat Milk Soap HERE 

    Deep Sea Goat Milk Soap

    Deep Sea was created to be a deep cleanser/spa bar. It’s one of my favorite bars of soap! We’ve been told by many male customers that it has a scent that they would consider “manly,” although I choose to think of it as more of a unisex scent. This soap includes eucalyptus, rosemary, and juniper berry essential oils. It also has kelp powder, spirulina, and orange peel powder, giving it’s lather a soft silty feel.

    You can find our Deep Sea Goat Milk Soap HERE

    Other Soaps Our Male Customers Might Want to Consider:

  • 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.

  • Topped or Not Topped

    Topped or not topped - Goat Milk Soap - The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    At The Freckled Farm Soap Company we have several goat milk soaps that come with a pretty decorative topping, including our Oatmeal Honey, Lavender, and Rose. It makes a lovely gift or a charming addition to your guest bath soap dish, but what if one of these soaps listed above is your everyday bar and you don’t want to always be dealing with the decorative topper coming off when you are using the soap in the bath? Well, we have you covered! For each of our “topped” soaps we offer a “not topped” option! The topping is purely decorative so removing them does not affect the smell.

    So should you go with the topped our not topped option? Well, it depends where you plan on using the soap. If you like the decorative topping and plan to use the soap in a sink or shower where the buds or oats will go directly down the drain then go for the topped option. If you don’t care for the topping or plan to use the soap in the bath, where any topping that comes off will just be floating around you then go for the not topped option.

  • Best Soaps for Children

    At nearly every farmer’s market and craft show that we have ever attended we have had someone ask us “What’s the best soap for …”. They want to know what soap is best for their unique situation. So, we have decided to create a series to help you pick the best soaps for your specific needs. What soaps is best for feet, or acne, or what about dry skin. Find the answers to all of these and many, many more over the course of the next year.

    We are going to start this series with the “soap need” people are most concerned about… Children. In general children have sensitive skin. Our daughter Bryce’s baby skin was incredibly sensitive. If for some reason her clothes were washed in a detergent that was not “free and clear” her whole body would break out in hives. For the longest time we would only use our Castile soap on her. When she started bathing with her brother she would show interest in using whichever soap variety he was using, so we began to test our other soaps on small areas of her skin. She never had a reaction to any of our soaps and has been able to use our entire soap line without any problems.

    Important things to remember: While the majority of our soap line is fine for sensitive skin, all soaps should be tested on a small area of skin before regular use. If your child should react to this soap (or any soap for that matter) you want the reaction to be contained to a small area and not all over the body. Also, our soaps are not tear-fee, no real soap can be tear-free. If you look at those tear-free baby soaps they are made up almost entirely of chemicals, making them soap free, and therefore tear-free. For me personally, I would rather deal with the soap in order to have a more natural option. Be sure to keep our soap out of your and your children’s eyes to avoid irritation.

    Castile Goat Milk Soap

    Our Castile is our most sensitive soap. It’s two main ingredients are olive oil and goat milk. It’s very gentle and can be used on even the most sensitive skin. Infants need very little soap, but if you are using one of our soaps on your baby this would be the soap to use.

    You can find our Castile Goat Milk Soap HERE

    Oatmeal Honey Goat Milk Soap

    Our Oatmeal Honey is another sensitive soap. The oatmeal and honey ingredients are said to calm irritated skin and are gentle on sensitive skin. This soap has ground oatmeal throughout, which acts as a light exfoliant. While this exfoliant is not as strong as others that are specifically designed to be “heavy exfoliants” it still should be used with caution on your youngest children. Any amount of exfoliant could potentially be irritating to very sensitive skin. While, we have never experienced an irritation with our sensitive skin child, it is still good to be on the cautious side.

    You can find our Oatmeal Honey Goat Milk Soap HERE

    Soaps to Avoid with Children

    Coffee: Our coffee is a heavy exfoliant which can be very irritating to children’s sensitive skin

    Rosewood Salt: Like with our coffee this soap is a heavy exfoliant and can cause irritation to sensitive skin.

  • Where you can find us this Winter…

    Now that most of our regular farmer’s markets are closed for the season and it’s a slow time for craft shows you might be wondering where you can pick up our goat milk soaps over the winter. While we may not be “everywhere” like we are from May through December, we are still very accessible through the Winter.

    You can still find us every Saturday at South of the James. It’s now the Winter Market and the hours have changed to 9am-12pm. There is a great group of vendors there throughout the winter, so it is well worth the trip!

    The West End Farm Markets, our other regular Saturday market through the Spring and Summer, has a pop up winter market on the second Saturday of each month. The market runs from 10am-12pm. We will be at each of the pop-up markets, provided it’s not raining. Tents are prohibited at the pop-up markets making it impossible for us to attend in inclement weather.

    Several stores throughout Virginia carry our soaps. Check out the “Where to Buy” section of our website to find all of the locations were our soap can be found!

  • Using our Goat Milk Soap as Shampoo – Revisited

    Two years ago I wrote a blog post about my experience using our goat milk soap as shampoo (You can find it here). The post gets incredible traffic, last year pulling in thousands of views. After spending several years using the soap I felt it was time to revisit this post and share some tips that I have learned from years of continued use.

    Using Goat Milk Soap as Shampoo from The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    In 2014, I set out to eliminate all commercial body care products from our household in order to reduce the chemicals that my family was being exposed to. That year we started to make our own deodorant, and used our handmade goat milk soap for everything possible, including washing our hands and bodies (of course), shaving, and shampoo. If you read the post from two years ago you will learn that I was quite skeptical about changing out my shampoo, but knew it was something that I needed to at least try.

    In all of this the important thing to remember is, like with most natural alternatives, it’s not going to act like and give you the same result as their commercial counterparts. There are pros and cons on both sides.

    The commercial soaps are often chemical based. They include chemicals that are specially designed to give your hair specific qualities, and in many cases they do as they are designed to do (pro). While these chemicals may be able to make your hair do what you want it to do, they could also be harmful to your health and to the environment (big con). For me, commercial soaps made my hair frizzy and my scalp dry and itchy, no matter what brand or specially product I used (con).

    Natural soaps, like our goat milk soap, are made with natural materials making them better for you and the environment (big pro), however they are not specifically designed to be used on hair (con). Because the soap does not strip your hair nearly as bad as the commercial brands do (at least in my experience), it makes your hair feel heavier (con), but hair tends to be a lot less greasy between washings (pro). For me, our goat milk soap made my hair feel stronger and less frizzy (pro). My waves continue to be more uniformed and less wild (pro) but my hair does not feel the same as it did with the commercial shampoos (con).

    With both the commercial shampoos and our goat milk soap I have to strip my hair at least once a month. While the build up on my hair and scalp with our soaps has been far less than it was with the commercial shampoos I still need to strip my hair with this vinegar and water mixture about once a month.

    When I started my experiment I was using our Castile soap because it was our most moisturizing bar and I was dealing with a very dry scalp and frizzy hair. I later found that this soap was too heavy to be used as a shampoo. Some of our customers, who have serious scalp issues, still swear by it, but for me it weighed my hair down too much. I have since started using our coffee goat milk soap or canine shampoo. The coffee goat milk soap’s PH is perfect for hair and the canine shampoo contains tea tree which is great for for dealing with dry itchy scalp.

    All in all I have had a good experience using our goat milk soap as shampoo. After years of use my hair feels stronger and more healthy.