The Freckled Farm Soap Company

Tag: The Freckled Farm

Open House at The Freckled Farm!
We get several requests a week from people asking if they can tour our farm. It’s just Kevin and me running the farm, business, and homeschooling our children, so our schedule is extremely full and time is precious. That means we are rarely able to accommodate these requests, especially at the rate they come in. We’ve been promising an open house for a while and we have finally set something up!

Our farm is on a shared driveway, with neighbors and very little parking. It’s not exactly set up for tours. So instead of just making our information available and saying “come one, come all” we set up tour times with a limited number of participants and taking reservations. This will stagger everyone throughout the day until the time comes for us to do our evening farm chores.

The tour is free and we will have our farmers market booth set up so guests can purchase our products while they are here.

September 23rd, 2018

10am – 2pm

At The Freckled Farm in Goochland, VA

Tour times:
- 10am – This time slot is already 50% reserved
- 11am – Available
- 12pm – Available
- 1pm – Available
Please email me (crystal@thefreckledfarmsoapcompany.com) to make your reservations. We will give you information about your tour and the address to the farm (about 45 minutes west of Richmond and 45 minutes east of Charlottesville).
September 9, 2018
Our Goat Milk Soap Laundry Detergent

Our Goat Milk Soap Laundry Detergent is really special. Before we started making it we were always searching for a detergent that wouldn’t cause our daughter (who was a toddler at the time) to break out in hives. Her skin was incredibly sensitive and it seemed like any contact with clothing washed in detergent that wasn’t free and clear would make her skin develop these horrible red splotches. We decided we wanted to make something that would be sensitive enough of her to use and that wouldn’t put nasty chemicals into our water system.

So we developed this simple, yet incredibly powerful, detergent. It gets out the tough stains left behind from our farm, like red clay, without irritating our daughter’s sensitive skin, and is nearly suds-free, making it better for your machine and our water system. It’s made with our Castile Goat Milk Soap, borax, and washing soda. You only use a tablespoon… that’s right a tablespoon!

You can start by purchasing one of our adorable refillable glass jars ($20 each). Which comes with a cute wooden scoop (pictured above). Once you have used the detergent in the jar you can refill it with our laundry refills. The refills are only $8 each which means the loads only costs about 14 cents each!

Do you want to try out our laundry detergent? You can find it here!

January 29, 2018
Gifted RVA

The Freckled Farm Soap Company’s Deep Space Goat Milk Soap and Lavender Goat Milk Laundry Detergent can now be found in Gifted RVA’s gift boxes.

Head over to their website to check out all of their fabulous gift boxes. They are full of awesome products from vendors from throughout Virginia. They have something for all occasions!

January 11, 2018
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…

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.

January 29, 2016
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:

Now Meet Our Support Team!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

January 25, 2016
Last Sale Day!

Today is the last day to take advantage of our big sale! Head over to the website to stock up and save on our goat milk soap and goat milk soap laundry detergent!

November 30, 2015
Weekend Goat Milk Soap Sale!

Our big sale is here! In honor of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday we are running a weekend long sale on our goat milk soap and goat milk laundry detergent. Now is the time to stock up on holiday gifts! Head over to the website to take advantage of this great deal!

November 27, 2015
Crystal’s Favorite Soap

My absolute favorite soap is our Peppermint Eucalyptus. This was the second soap variety that we ever made (Castile was the first) and it was instantly my favorite. We have had dozens of new varieties come through the company and while many of them have come close none have been able to match the Peppermint Eucalyptus in my eyes.

The peppermint tingles and is incredibly refreshing. During the summer, when I am dealing with the super high temperatures, I always take a shower when I come in from farm chores with my Peppermint Eucalyptus because it feels like it is actually cooling me down! This little fact makes it sound like it wouldn’t be a great soap to use during the winter… but that is not the case. In the winter it is refreshing without being cold and you have the added benefit of the eucalyptus which has always been great in combination with the steam of the shower for my sinuses.

If you are interested in trying our Peppermint Eucalyptus Goat Milk Soap yourself you can find it here.

June 29, 2015
Kevin’s Favorite Soap

At markets and craft shows we often have customers ask us what our favorite soaps are. This gave us an idea! Over the next four weeks you will learn the favorite soaps of the four members of The Freckled Farm family.

I, Kevin, will start. My favorite soap is /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\<— (drumroll)…….. Canine Shampoo. Yes, that’s right. My favorite of all of our soaps is the one we made for dogs. I’ll give you a second to think of any appropriate jokes that apply. . . . . OK now that the initial shock has worn off let me explain. Canine Shampoo uses our standard oil blend of the base. Then we add ground oatmeal, lavender, tea tree, and rosemary essential oils. To me it is the perfect blend. It has a little exfoliant in the ground oatmeal. It’s earthy and smells great. I first started using it just as a shampoo bar, but quickly realized that there was no need to switch to another bar after washing my hair. So now this has become my whole body bar. It’s also really good for me because I have very oily skin and the mixture of lavender and tea tree work really well together.

If you haven’t already you can subscribe to our blog to learn about the whole family’s favorite soaps as well as all sorts of fun facts and happenings around the farm.

June 22, 2015
365 Project Round-up – May

I have had so much fun looking back at these pictures each month. It’s amazing to go back and see what we have accomplished in such a short amount of time. It gives you a new perspective. I can’t believe how quickly things have come together in the last month, especially with the garden… Thinking back it sure doesn’t feel that way, but looking at the photographs there is visual evidence that we sure have accomplished a lot!

To follow our 365 project “A Photo a day from The Freckled Farm” follow us on Instagram: Thefreckledfarm

June 1, 2015