Our Winter Goat Milk Soap is our most popular seasonal soap. This awesome bar contains molasses and is scented with cinnamon, clove, and ginger… just like a ginger bread cookie! The scent is warm, crisp, and fresh, a true representation of winter. This soaps sells out super fast so pick some up before they are all gone!
Pick some up on our website!
It’s easy to fall into the winter blues when it seems like not a lot is happening on the weekends. You are stuck inside all week. That’s not how you want to spend your weekends too! During the rest of the year its so nice to start your weekend off with a visit to the farmers markets to stock up on all of your needs and maybe pick up a tasty breakfast, but during the winter what is there to do? Guess what… In Virginia there are still awesome farmers markets to visit. Winter markets have increased greatly over the last few years, so now you don’t have to go without! So where can you pick up our goat milk soaps, laundry detergent, and lotions this winter:
South of the James Farmers Market – It’s undeniable… South of the James is one of the top farmers markets in Virginia and it’s year round! We feel beyond grateful to have such a wonderful place to offer our products. We are out at SOJ every single Saturday of the year, unless the governor declares a state of emergency because of hazardous weather. During the summer there are an incredible number of vendors and many of those vendors stay on all year. If you are coming during the winter you will not be disappointed. Everything you need is still there! There is always at least one or two veggie vendors, honey, dog treats, our goat milk soap products, the list goes on and on… and there are always lots of great choices for breakfast.
Visit South of the James Farmers Market – Every Saturday during the winter – 9am-12pm – New Kent Ave & 42nd Street, Richmond, VA 23225
The Winter Farmers Market at IX Park – This is a brand new winter market in Charlottesville. It has a great selection and is both indoors and outdoors. You can find us at one of the outdoor spots on select Saturdays… Which is hopefully most Saturdays through March.
Visit The Winter Farmers Market at IX Park – Saturdays during the winter – 9am-1pm – 522 2nd Street SE in Charlottesville, Virginia
We are also in the process of applying to several craft shows that will take place this winter so please continue to check in on our Where to Buy page on our website for more up to date information.
So this is it! This is the last peek into our soap dish and if you have been reading the blog and watching our social media accounts you shouldn’t be surprised by what we use this time of year! What’s in our soap dish in December?…
Winter Goat Milk Soap
You better believe we use our Winter Goat Milk Soap in December! It’s a big treat when this soap comes around. It’s wildly popular and doesn’t last very long, so when we have it I enjoy it! It smells just like how you would expect winter to smell and the ginger essential oil gives it a wonderful warming effect. It’s the perfect bar of soap!
Find our Winter Goat Milk Soap Here
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.
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!
Your skin’s needs change throughout the year and it may benefit you to use different soap varieties at different points of the year. We are here as soap makers to give you insight into what WE use each month and why! While we often take what we can get and our soap dish is usually filled with flawed soaps (dented, or underweight) that we can’t sell, if we get a choice the following are the soaps we love to use in January:
Winter Goat Milk Soap
I look forward to us having our Winter Goat Milk Soap in stock all year long. In 2014 we sold out in two weeks and I really didn’t have the opportunity to use it very much. In 2015 we made three times more of it than we had the year before. We released it on December 5th and sold more that day than we had in our whole 2014 stock! Now, a week into the new year, we only have a small supply left. This soap has a warm scent (ginger, cinnamon, clove, and dark molasses) and a beautiful (naturally occurring) red color. The ginger essential oil also gives the soap a slight warming effect during use!
If you are interested in adding our Winter Goat Milk Soap to your January soap dish, you should order it soon! We are very close to selling out and won’t have it back in stock until the first week in December 2016.
Find our Winter Goat Milk Soap Here
Castile Goat Milk Soap
Our Castile Goat Milk Soap serves different uses at different times of year. Castile serves as an excellent shave soap, which is less of a concern this time of year, however the Castile also has a very moisturizing lather. During the Winter, when our wood stove (or in most of our reader’s cases, central heat) is running full blast, our skin dries out. We use our Castile soap to keep our skin soft and hydrated during the dry Winter months.
Find our Castile Goat Milk Soap Here
Check back next month to see what’s in our soap dish in February!
It’s almost officially winter. It won’t be long before we are dealing with extremely cold temperatures!
Most farm animals are built to deal with the cold to some degree. They have thick skin and a thick coats, but when tempatures drop well below freezing, like they did last winter, they may need a little help. Below I have outlined some ways we help our animals stay warm and healthy even when the temperatures reach frigid levels!
While most animals can deal with cold temperatures without much issue, following the few steps outlined above you can help them get through the harshest points of winter.
It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the cold and snow, but even I can see the beauty around the farm after a snow storm. Everything looks so fresh and clean. A stark difference from the muddy mess we have been dealing with the last few months. This past Wednesday, the day after we received 8 inches of snow overnight, I trekked around the farm documenting some of the beautiful scenes the storms left behind.
With the storm came frigid temperatures. Friday morning it was -6 degrees! It has been a struggle to keep the house warm and get things done around the farm. At this point I am beyond ready for spring to come!
On Monday evening we got around 8 inches of snow. It was the biggest snow storm that we have gotten this winter. The farm looks beautiful. While I do enjoy one big snow, now that it has happened I am ready to move on and have spring move in. We are looking at extremely low temperatures the rest of the week, including a low of -8 Thursday night. I’ve said it a million times… I’m not built for cold.
Monday we received word that we have been accepted to the Thursday evening Powhatan Farmers Market. I am loving watching our spring and summer schedule come together. We are in for an amazing year! In the next few weeks our schedule should be finalized and I will post everything on a blog. I’m waiting an “official” confirmation from two markets.
The countdown to kidding season continues:
This has been the week of figuring out what our spring and summer is going to look like. We’ve been applying to farmers markets. Our plan going into the year was to be at five markets throughout the week and so far we have applied to a total of five. I have one more that I am considering. I should have a better idea what our farmers market schedule will look like in a few weeks and I will update the “Where to Buy” section of the website! We are also applying to several late winter and spring festivals.
Kidding season will soon be here! Sonia is due first, in a little over 4 weeks! Ruth is next, followed by Hillary later in the month. Tina is not due until June (assuming she is pregnant, we only bred her a week and a half ago). We will be starting to slowly increase their feed over the next few weeks to help prepare them for milk production. They will also be getting their CDT booster shots.
This is the time of year that things really start to pick up around the farm! The days are getting longer, egg production is picking up, the countdown to kidding has started, and we are getting days that are at least somewhat warm! The winter funk is starting to thaw!