The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Tag: Soap

  • What’s in our Bits and Pieces?

    Have you ever wondered what’s inside our Bits and Pieces Bags?

    Bits and Pieces Goat Milk Soap from The Freckled Farm Soap Company

    Our Bits and Pieces bags are filled with a pound of the odds and ends of soaps that we cannot sell in our regular packaging. You may find full size bars that do not  make the weight that we state on our packaging or the little slivers left at the end when we cut the soap bars from the loaf or even soaps that have been recently discontinued or are out of season. We do our best to make each bag with varieties that pair well together. Our Bits and Pieces is a great way to get a fun variety of our Goat Milk Soaps at a significantly reduced price.

    The image above was the contents of one Bits and Pieces bag

  • The Soap Testers

    We put our Goat Milk Soap and other products through rigorous testing before we make it available to the public. We don’t want to release a product that isn’t of the highest quality, so we take our soap testers’ and customers’ feedback very seriously.

    When it comes to our soap we spent around six months developing the perfect recipe and then another few months having our soap testers use the soap and give us feedback. They gave us feedback on how the soap made their skin feel, and how they felt about the quality of the lather. If they had skin conditions they informed us of how the soap affected it. After about a year from when we first started to develop our unique recipe we finally felt that it was ready to roll out to the public.

    When it came to our laundry detergent we wanted to make sure we had testers with all kinds of machines; new, old, top loader, high efficiency. We had them share their experience with different types of stains and how the detergent affected different types of clothing. A great deal of research had gone into the recipe of our goat milk laundry detergent, but feedback from our testers means so much when it comes to the final product.

    This year we have several new products debuting and you better believe that we are putting each one of those products through the paces! You can always be assured that we won’t release a product that we don’t feel is perfect.

  • Best Soaps for Teenagers

    I cannot tell you how many times I have had an exasperated mother of a teenaged boy ask what soap works the best for teenagers. Teenagers have “special” soap needs. So which of our goat milk soaps do I suggest you purchase for your teenager?

    What’s something all teenagers desperately need from their soap?…. A deodorizer. Am I wrong? We have two soaps that are awesome deodorizers, our Tea Tree Goat Milk Soap and our Coffee Goat Milk Soap. They are both great for neutralizing body odors.

    The Coffee Goat Milk Soap, with it’s gritty lather, is also great for getting grease, grime, and dirt off their skin from whatever their hobby may be… Be it art, sports, shop, robotics, etc.

    I highly recommend either of these soaps for your teenager!

  • Sustainable Palm Oil and Our Goat Milk Soap

    Palm Oil is a very controversial ingredient. It is an edible oil that derives from the palm fruit, grown on the African Oil Palm Tree. Oil palms originated in Africa, but now can be found in all warm weather climates around the world. This oil is found in a very large percentage of the items we use everyday including food, soaps, shampoos, toothpaste, and cleaning agents. It is the second largest vegetable oil used world wide. Because of the wide spread use this industry contributes heavily to deforestation, habitat degradation, animal cruelty, as well as climate change.

    So why does the soap industry use palm oil? Well, this particular oil includes a hard to find form of vitamin E, tocopherol, and also has the ability to remove oil and dirt while protecting the natural oils of your skin and hair. It’s an important part of the soap making industry.

    Now for the good news… There is a way to continuing to use palm oil without harming the environment. At The Freckled Farm Soap Company we only use organic, sustainable, palm oil. This means our palm oil is ethically farmed with organic practices. Our oil supplier has produced to us a certificate stating their product comes from a sustainable source that meets the rigorous requirements set forth by the RSPO. These requirements ensure that the land, animal inhabitants, as well the indigenous people who work the land are treated fairly, and ethically, while carrying out ecologically safe farming practices. This allows you to take advantage of the benefits of this oil without worry that you are contributing to harming the environment and actually contributes to helping ensure these practices become more common.

  • What’s the lather like?

    This is a question I receive frequently from new customers. People are often surprised, and maybe a little disappointed, when they use a handmade soap for the first time and find that the lather is not as robust as they are used to with their commercial bar. I will commonly have customers, who are looking to use our soap for the first time, ask what they can expect from our lather.

    Goat Milk Soap Lather

    I want to start off by saying that there is a good reason why handmade soaps often do not lather as strongly as their commercial counterparts. Commercial soaps frequently contain sulfates. Sulfates are used as a foaming agent that helps the soap to quickly develop a thick lather. There are countless articles out there that debate the use of sulfates, whether they are safe for you or the environment. Whether or not you believe that they are “safe” there is a decent amount of evidence that shows that sulfates can cause skin irritation.

    The important thing to remember is that the lather itself does not get your skin clean. We have been conditioned to believe that a thick lather is necessary for the soap to do it’s job… It’s not. So why include an ingredient that is not necessary and is potentially harmful?

    With that said, what about our lather? We understand that our customers want lather, so when we were developing our recipe we designed a mixture of oils that promotes a more robust lather than is often found in homemade soaps. We do this naturally just with the percentage of a few key oils within our soap.

    So, what’s our lather like? For most of our soap line it is full, silky, and bubbly. It gives you the experiences that you are looking for and leaves your skin feeling soft and clean. The lather of our Castile Goat Milk Soap and our Cedarwood Goat Milk Soap is more lotion-like. It’s slick and full, making it a perfect soap for shaving. Finally there is our Rosewood Salt Goat Milk Soap. The lather for this particular soap is a little thinner than the others, because of the salt, but it still bubbles up nicely.

    We put a lot of effort and research into naturally getting the perfect lather for our soaps. Give it a try! You won’t be disappointed!

  • 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.