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Time On The Move

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I can’t believe that it’s the middle of August. Time has just gotten away from me and I suppose that’s the case with everyone. It seems as though it was just yesterday that I announced our Spring Fiber CSA and as of today, word from the Mill is all of the fiber should be spun into yarn and ready to ship by the end of the week. It seems as though they wanted to get the really large orders out as soon as possible..my good and our shareholders good. All of the Roving is ready for shipping now and should go out Friday.

So many people have emailed me asking if we have any plans for a Fall CSA. As of right now, no. I am trying very hard to get all of the soap and lotion orders caught up before the Holiday season gets here and I’m not sure that I’ve got it in me to set up another CSA for the Fall. The only thing that makes me want to say yes, is all of the fiber I still have here at the farm. It would be nice to move it out of the loft before next Spring. We are working on another idea though for Fall that I will discuss more in upcoming blogs. It’s a little different but I think that the concept might be well received. Keep checking back to find out more.

As of last count, I have moved over 300 bars of soap out of here since the 1st and that’s what I am doing today..making soap. It’s amazing how well this side of the farm business is doing. We just shipped a very large order to Italy yesterday and I am working on a pretty good size order to deliver tomorrow locally. Breeze Hill Farm is becoming a household name in the states and abroad. Can’t beat that, eh?

I wish I could say that our Co-op sales were this good but they aren’t. I don’t know what is going on but each week sales are consistently going down to the point that this week we’ve sold less than $100.  of product. We love this Co-op and the other producers and members but it gets a bit costly to travel close to 100 miles to deliver so little. Maybe everyone is concentrating on final vacations and school starting. Don’t know but I miss my customers! Our products in a “food” Co-op have been fairly hard to sell anyway. Try as we may, we just can’t seem to get the point across that we are trying to “take care of outside while the food producers are taking care of the inside”. The fact that our soaps are molded in pretty molds doesn’t take away from the benefits of goats milk soap for the skin and our lotions and creams are just wonderful, for the whole family. Of course, being a producer, I just want everybody to buy bunches all of the time. Maybe in the Fall.

Got to get back to the soap. Everybody have a great day!

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A Lavender High!

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Wednesday is always a busy day here at the farm. It’s the Co-op delivery prep day. Without fail, someone always orders that one thing that I thought was in stock and it isn’t. So I get to spend 2 hours making 3 bars of goats milk soap. This is totally my fault but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a pain.  The other side of the coin today is I have been working with Lavender since about 6:00 this morning and I, well there is no other way to put it, I’m a little tipsey! When I work with lavender, I always keep the windows opened but it is quite strong in the kitchen. Oh well, it’s a happy high.

I’ve started working on the Lavender Hydrosols that we will soon offer for sale. They are so wonderful, especially if you use our Laundry Soap Kit and want to add a light natural fragrance to your clothes. It’s also amazing to spritz a little in the bathroom after a shower, that’s the P.M. shower..no one wants to be that relaxed in the morning!

I want to say thank you for the comments I have received on my blog. I am so glad that people are willing to let me know what they think of our products and it’s also nice to know what they think of others too.  When I posted my blog about “Baby”, I thought my emails were going to burst. So thank you for taking the time to comment either here on the blog or through email.

Well, I guess I have to go back to work, err! Have a great day!

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CSA Update and More

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I cannot believe how quickly a week..or two goes by! Each time I blog, I promise to do so more often and the next thing I know it’s been a week or more since my last post. Apparently, having employees is how so many of you farmers/business owners are able to blog constantly. I find that there are simply not enough hours in a minute.

First thing I want to cover is the progress on the fiber processing for the CSA. I talked with the Mill Thursday. All of the blending and carding is complete and they anticipate that spinning will start by month end. The good news, for those who purchased the roving shares, the roving is being shipped this week. That shipment should be in by the end of the week and we will start sorting out the natural shares next week. I will start dying the dyed shares the following week and those should be ready for shipping to our shareholders the last week of August. Our plan is to have a small gathering the last Saturday of this month for roving pickup and for any other shareholders who want to come out for the day. We will have a lot going on for everyone to enjoy and there will be lots of food and drink. For those who wish to come in from out of town, we have reserved our favorite, local B & B for the entire weekend. Email me at breezehillfarm@verizon.net to let me know if you need lodging.

It was pretty exciting to see Breeze Hill Farm listed as the “Featured Producer” this week with Fall Line Farms Co-op. We are so happy with how successful the Co-op has been its first two seasons and look forward to season #3. Check them out, if you aren’t already a member. Several of our drop/pick up points are now carrying our products, so if you forget to order from the Co-op, you can pick up extra items from these these points. Gather carries a complete line of  our wonderful goat’s milk soaps and Cavanna Pasta has a nice sampling of our entire line of goat’s milk products. Weekly we are increasing our outlets for our products and are so happy when we hear from our customers through referrals.

Well, that about covers everything for now. I am off to make another large batch of lavender soap, so I’ll be very relaxed by the end of this day!

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The Whole Garden is Finally In

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Well we may be picking our last tomatoes and peppers as the first snow falls but our garden is finally in..now it’s time to think about fall planting. It will be interesting to see how well this garden does. If the rains continue to come every 4 or so days and it continues not to be so horribly hot, everything should grow well. Just can’t believe we took this long. Oh well, it’s been really busy here and there just wasn’t enough time to get everything done.

I am trying to get a rather large goat’s milk product order filled and it’s really slow going. Probably because I’m trying to fill other orders at the same time, while dying roving and yarns in between.  Also, I am making myself sit down at the spinning wheel everyday for 1 hour and spin. It’s good for the mental health and I have a custom spun order that I’ve been working on for several months now that is finally getting finished. Usually by this time of year I have completed the 12 items that I spin and knit each year to sell..I don’t even know where my knitting needles are!

All fussing aside, things are really going great. The animals seem to be doing very well, even though Boggie, my 18 year old sheep, gives me a good scare everyday with her “dead sheep lay”..guess she’s practicing or just exercising her Mommie.

 

"Boggie"

"Boggie"

She’s looking good for an 18 year old, we think.

 

 The goat’s are fat, happy, and giving lots of milk, with little to no incident. All is well for today.

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Introducing Two New Products

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What a beautiful morning this is. It was 62 degrees at the farm when we got up, bright sun and almost no humidity. That’s really saying something for summer in Virginia. A morning like this made fixing a country breakfast mandatory. The most enjoyable part of it was including our first tomato of the season. It was nice finally getting something out of the garden that wasn’t zucchini! For the past month, it’s been nothing but zucchini bread, fried zucchini, sauteed zucchini, mock zucchini crab cakes (these are amazing!) and veggie mixes..with zucchini. The freezer is full of it, friends run when they see me coming, it’s a sad state!

It’s been months in the fine tuning and testing and finally our new Jewelweed Products are ready for sale (they are not on the website yet so you will have to email me breezehillfarm@verizon.net  to order). For those who do not know the significance of Jewelweed, it is wonderful for shortening the duration of an out break of poison ivy and oak and in some cases stopping an outbreak from occurring.

The two new products are a Jewelweed Balm, which is made with all natural and organic ingredients and Jewelweed Soap. Not being a person who has bad reactions to poison ivy or oak, I had to take the product to quite a few people for testing. The positive results were 100%. Both products benefit from having a variety of oils that help clear up the problem and leave the skin feeling soft but the soap has an extra bonus of containing goat’s milk. These two items are a must have for the summer first aid kit!

Well I’m off to go take a look at 3 possible new goat doelings that were born in March. Because of the increase in business, we need to add to our herd and these girls will make a wonderful addition.

Update for the processor. The fiber has been received and they hope to start working on it by the end of next week. This is great news, because it is possible that the shares will be available sooner than we had expected.