We are so excited to be a part of The Richmond Craft Mafia’s Spring Bada-Bing Craft Show again this year! They put on the best shows! The quality of the vendors is always amazing. This show will take place on April 11th at Hardywood Park Craft Brewery. We hope you come out to see us!
Richmond Craft Mafia’s Spring Bada-Bing
April 11th
11am – 5pm
Hardywood Park Craft Brewery
2408 Ownby Ln, Richmond, VA 23220
It’s April!! Spring is really starting to settle in and temperatures are rising slowly. The trees around the farm are starting to bloom, the garden is coming together, and we have lots of babies running around. It’s a wonderful time to live on a farm!
Last Friday Hillary finally had her babies. She was actively in labor for well over 24 hours. All day Thursday she was panting heavily, and had several very strong contractions. We sat with her from 9pm-11pm because we were sure it was going to happen any second. She was up and down, and having contractions here and there. Finally after two hours without much progression we decided it would be a good idea to get some sleep… because as we all know a watched goat never kids. We had a restless night with all of the moaning and movement coming over the monitor, but nothing changed, and when morning farm chores came along she had not progressed at all.
Kevin went to check on Hillary around 8am and she had started to push. It wasn’t long before a little doe was born and a second kid was on the way. The second kid’s kidding wasn’t as easy. He was coming out head first, legs back, and he was huge… nearly as big as our 2 week olds. She pushed for quite a while and I had to aid a little, but he finally came out. Lastly, with very little effort, Hillary had another doe. Everyone is doing well! We are officially done with kidding until June, when Tina is due. 3 Kiddings, 8 Total Babies, 4 Bucks and 4 Does
Production has ramped up around here. We’ve been working hard to prepare for our busy season starting in less than two weeks. We are of course at South of the James every Saturday still. Next weekend we have Spring Bada-Bing, which is our biggest craft show of the spring. The following weekend we have RVA Earth day… and then after that market seasons start to kick off! It won’t be long and we will be in 5 markets a week! This means lots of soap and laundry detergent needs to be made. I really love this time of year!
Every once in a while we will have a bar of soap that isn’t up to our very strict standards. Maybe it was cut a little too small, so it doesn’t make the weight we state on our label, or maybe it has a dent or air bubble. Maybe it’s a scent that we no longer offer. Then there are those “end pieces” left over after we cut the soap loafs. We also have those beautiful molded soaps that sell great for custom orders, but were hard to display at the markets, leaving us with an abundance of shaped soaps. So what are we supposed to do with all of these leftover soaps? They are perfectly good and end up sitting in boxes… Well now you can buy them at a discounted price!
With our new Bits N’ Pieces bags you will get at least 1 pound of assorted soaps for only $10! If you are buying our full sized bars a pound of soap would be between 3-5 bars (some soaps weigh more than others), so this is a significant savings!
All the soaps within the bags are perfectly good soaps. For example, our Rosewood Salt Goat Milk Soap, one of our most popular varieties, has a very small window in which the loafs can be cut. If they are cut too soon they are easily dented and messed up because they are too soft. If they are cut too late they are too hard to cut and parts can break off. In the past we have had whole loafs where chunks break off the bar during the cutting process… they are still great bars of soap but are not perfect enough to sell individually. Then there are those molded soaps (you can see them here). We have a bin of these awesome soaps and nothing to do with them and they are just too pretty to waste!
These bags are stuffed full of great goat milk soaps that we can’t sell individually! You will not be disappointed in our Bits N’ Pieces bag! They are now available on our website and will be at our farmer’s market booths!
It’s SPRING!! Oh my goodness I am not sure I have ever been so happy for winter to end. Yesterday was the first day of Spring, which means it is time for our Spring Goat Milk Soap to come out!
The plan was to have a set scent to represent each season that would return each year. This worked out for all of our seasonal soaps, except for Spring… which we learned soon after making the first batch that Kevin and I were allergic to the main essential oil used. It was awful! Every time we had to work with it we would both get terrible sinus headaches. So, while it was a pretty bar of soap, that many people enjoyed, we had to change it up this year. The other seasonal varieties were wildly popular (especially Winter which sold out in just two weeks!) and will remain the same. So what did we pick for this year’s spring soap?!…. A wonderful floral blend!
For the 2015 Spring Goat Milk Soap we used the essential oils of Jasmine (one of my favorite scents), Rose, and Lavender. This bright, cheery soap has a light floral scent. It’s a beautiful blend and I am extremely happy with it! This will be a returning soap for sure!
Our Spring Goat Milk Soap will be available on our website and at our farmers market and craft show booths through the Spring!
It’s finally here: Our Goat Milk Laundry Soap!
We’ve been working on it for months and have put this laundry detergent through the paces! It has worked wonders on our red clay caked farm clothes and we have heard nothing but great things from our soap testers! It was able to get stains out of our clothes that have been there for a long time, and it works it’s magic with only a tablespoon of detergent. You get over 50 washes out of our 24 oz containers.
It is always exciting to release a product that you know your customers are going to love and we can’t wait for everyone to try it! Check out the detergents on our website…. and remember orders over $50 receive free shipping!
We are in the final stretch before the start of kidding season! Sonia only has a week and a half left. She has received all of her vaccinations (CDT and BoSe) and we continue to increase her feed to prepare her for milk production. She is a first freshener and they tend to bag up (their udders grow) over the course of the last week or two but hers hasn’t started to grow yet, however that is not an indication of how close she is as she could potentially bag up right before she kids. One indication of how close she is to kidding are her ligaments. They are about the size and thickness of a pencil and are on either side of the doe’s tail, as they get closer to their due date the ligaments soften until they eventually disappear, at which point labor is imminent. Sonia’s ligaments are quite soft! She is most definitely going to keep us on our toes! Ruth is a little over two weeks away and will be getting her BoSe shot this Friday. Her ligaments are also softening. Hillary has a little bit longer to go with a little over 4 weeks left. She is already huge though! I have a feeling she will go at least a little before her due date. Then of course there is Tina… who isn’t due until June. Between the 3 girls who are due in March we will likely get 5-6 kids. My current guess is we will get 3 does and 2-3 bucks. I hope I am right!! We will soon find out!
On Tuesday morning we put in the monitor in the barn. This monitor allows us to hear everything that is going on in there and helps us catch when the girls go into labor. It keeps us from having to constantly go out and check on them. It’s great during the day, and is helpful at night however it keeps me up most of the night since I am a really light sleeper.
Yesterday our packaging for the laundry detergent came in! Isn’t it cute! This jar is the largest size. There will also be a refill size and a sample size. It won’t be long until we are able to debut it!
It has been a very busy week. We are still very much in the adjustment period since Kevin left his day job, but we are finally starting to form some sort of routine. I am in the middle of wedding booking season for the photography business, we are working on our new goat milk soap laundry detergent, contacting stores about carrying our products, building up our soap supply, and taking care of the farm. Busy, busy, busy, but we are loving working together full time.
Last Wednesday we took Tina to have her hooves reshaped. She foundered this past Summer and we spent months controlling the crazy growth and lowering her grain intake to slow it down. I finally felt like we got her back to (somewhat) normal, so we took her to a farm in Culpeper who were going to use a grinder to get her feet back to the correct shape. We didn’t breed her in the fall because we were dealing with getting her feet comfortable again. We honestly were debating whether we were breed her again at all because we weren’t sure if it would be too hard on her, but the farmers in Culpeper didn’t think that her case was anywhere near as bad as others that they had seen and she was cleared to breed again. She went into heat on Monday and was bred to Warner. Her due date will be June 25th, much later than we are used to, but it could set us up for a year round milking schedule. It would be nice to not have periods of the year where we are without fresh milk coming in… We have two chest freezers of frozen milk for soap (it must be frozen to be used in the soap making process), but it’s not the same when it comes to drinking.
The last two weeks since Kevin left his “day job” have been an adjustment. For the last two years we have lived in survival mode. Kevin was pulling in at least 60 hours a week at work and every other second of the day was stacked with things that needed to be done for the businesses and farm. Late nights and extremely early mornings were how we lived. Now that the 60 hours of work outside of our businesses are gone we are trying to figure out what our new schedule looks like. We no longer have to live with the mindset that if we have a second it needs to be filled with something because who knows how much time we are going to have later. We are working on balancing everything and actually giving ourselves time to just relax… what a concept. I have actually had to set myself a set of tasks that need to be completed that day, and once I am done I am allowed to relax. Otherwise I will just move on to one of other five hundred tasks on my to do list…
One of our big projects this week is working on our new goat milk soap laundry detergent. We are officially in the research and development phase! So far so good! We plan to sell them in three sizes; a nice large reusable glass container with a wooden scoop, refill bags, and finally a sample size for 2-4 washes. We are currently planning on 4 scents; Sunrise Citrus, Lavender, Tea Tree (for strong odors caused by bacteria – body odor and stinky socks), and Unscented. Look for these detergents to join our market booths and website in the late winter or early spring.
We do have a little bit of sad news from this week. We lost one of our free ranging chickens to a hawk. Her name was Sophia and she was one of our original chickens. In fact she gave us our very first egg! We retired to her to the pasture last spring where she, and several of her sisters, had the run of both pastures and the barn. We knew this was a possibility. Chickens are very vulnerable to predators, especially when they are free ranging, but that doesn’t make it any easier when it happens. I am extremely tender-hearted and we love our animals. In the meantime we have moved the few other free rangers into the big closed coop until we can figure out a safer option for them. Our fear is now that the hawk knows where the food is he will just keep coming back.
Check back next week for even more updates!! There is so much in the works!
This is the last week to get our soap for Christmas gifts! Who doesn’t love receiving handmade, local goat milk soap? It’s a great stocking stuffer or teacher gift!
Saturday December 20th – South of the James Farmer’s Market – 9am – 12pm – Forest Hill Park – New Kent Ave & 42nd Street, Richmond VA
Saturday December 20th – Vendor Expo at Midnight Brewery – 1-4pm – 2410 Granite Ridge Rd, Rockville, VA 23146
This will be our first week at the South of the James Farmers Market! Come out and see us!
Saturday December 13th – South of the James Farmer’s Market – 9am – 12pm – Forest Hill Park – New Kent Ave & 42nd Street, Richmond VA
Sunday December 14th – Carytown Artisan Market – 10am – 5pm – 3201 West Cary Street, Richmond VA