'Tis the season of Farmer's Markets and Festivals! We have had so much fun bringing our soap and lotions out the masses! There is nothing more rewarding than meeting new customers and seeing our repeat customers! 

The summer temperatures have been so pleasant. The animals are all thriving. Currently, our animal inventory includes 21 Nigerian Dwarf goats, 19 rabbits, 32 chickens, 4 turkeys, 3 dogs, 2 cats, and a spotted leopard gecko lizard. Feeding time is always labor intense.

We are excited to have our products at The Green Sheep in Hickory, Devine Farms in Newton, Buffalo Creek Creamery in Germanton, and Good Food Grower's Market in Kernersville. We are set up in Taylorsville, NC at the Saturday morning Farmer's Market in the old hospital parking lot (HWY 16 just past Walmart) from 8-12 almost every week. Come see us! We are busy trying to keep the website as up to date as possible! 

Our next major festival will be in September. We are currently debating which event we will be at but we will post our announcement soon. 

We currently have 2 goats for sale, one doe and one buck. See our sales page for pictures. We are downsizing our rabbitry and would love to rehome at least half of our stock. For questions and pricing, please email us at [email protected]. We are expecting babies in October. FLG Farms La Luna Creciente is getting PLUMP so we hope that she and Oakmoon FLG Drift had a successful date and that she's not just fat! Dahlia was also bred for the same date but she's been tough to get bred and we don't think she took this time either. She has yet to have her first freshening and we are starting to feel a weeeeeeeeeee bit impatient.

I will try to get another blog up here soon! New addition to the website made today includes an update to our soap and lotions and the inclusion of our stud service agreement memo. 

Happy days to you and yours! Thank you for reading!

Yes...yes we have been completely BAD about updating our blog. Life gets busy! However - I thought I'd share some of our new babies with you! Meet (from left to right) Hershey's new babies: Katydid, SnickerDoodle, and Hiccup. Two does and one buck that joined us early EARLY Sunday morning, March the 16th. Hiccup is tiny but hanging in there, getting strong every day. His sisters are active and so much fun!

In December, we got to meet Bellatryx (pictured lower left with mom Bonnet) who is just a dream baby. She is sweet and curious and will let me love all over her. I see her being as great of a milker as her mom!  

We have suffered TOO many chicken losses to predators here and decided to finally add a Livestock Guardian Dog. "Winter" came to us from Buttermilk Acres in Trade, Tennessee. She is the BIGGEST puppy I think we've ever seen, let alone adopted but she is incredibly sweet and very smart. She is learning her job quickly.

In February, we welcomed Tudor Rose's first freshening and a sweet little girl we named Tatyana (Tatters for short). The winter has been LONG and Mother Nature needs some serious mood stabilizers but we are eager for spring to begin. We have some wonderful things planned for this year. Sadly, Old Man Winter took one of our beehives out. The one beehive we have remaining is struggling. It may be a project we put on hold until 2015. We've been adding to our orchard and now have 8 apple trees, 16 blueberries, 12 raspberries and 3 fig trees. It's my hope that we'll be generating lots of pollen which may help new bees forage a bit closer to home when we do rebuild the hives.

The soap business is amazing, fulfilling, and a lot of work! I'm excited to see new stores interested in our products! Tomorrow, Saturday, I will be dropping off a new order to a wonderful organic farm store that just opened outside of Kernersville. Check out Good Food Growers Market on facebook! We've loaded up Buffalo Creek Farm & Creamery in Germanton, NC with lots of soaps as well! By the way - BEST Dates & Honey Chevre EVER. 

First - THANK YOU to anyone and everyone who has purchased our soaps. We have received such incredible feedback and simply put, it just keeps me wanting to make more soaps!  This past month we rolled out a number of new products including our beer soaps, our lip balms, and our body butters. FUN! See our FLG Bath & Body Products website to see all of the soaps off the curing wrap and ready for purchase!

May I help you??? This truly has been the theme over the summer with the incredible response to our FLG Farms soaps. WHAT A THRILL to be able to create a product we love and THEN find out that others love the soaps as much as we do. This summer has been kinda crazy working out the details and goals for the future of our soaping business but we sure don't mind and we love that our soaps have now been shipped to Minnesota, Arkansas, Illinois, Florida, and Michigan! Our store here on the website is now up and running and our soaps are ready to be sent anywhere in the US!  We are also SO PLEASED to be in partnership with THE GREEN SHEEP SHOP in Hickory, North Carolina! What a great eco-friendly store with amazing natural parenting supplies AND Blue Ridge Woodworkings beautifully made pieces. Go check them out!

We are also now in partnership with THREE FORKS CAKES who uses our free-range chickens' eggs in their AMAZING cakes. All in all, the summer has brought us many things for which we are grateful.

On another note - the goats are doing great. We've had a lot of changes in our herd over the summer. Having had a SEVERELY buck heavy kid year this year - we had to move some out. Goodbye to Diego, Capone, Buckshot, Stratus and Cirrus. Mortimer will go to Avynat Farms in December and in his place, we welcomed in Chocolate Kiss who reminds me of a dalmation and is just as sweet as a little puppy.  We also acquired some new doelings from Pinnacle Hills Goat Farm (Mary Colman and her husband are the NICEST people) and got to see how another wondeful soap maker works her craft while we were there! 

Yes...we've had some downers this summer as well. Dacia broke her leg - I mean REALLY broke her leg. All the bones in the lower part of her right leg were shattered. What a lesson we have learned about Houdini goats who slip under fences, climb up on barbecue grills and then get their foot caught in the BBQ's lid handle on her way down. Who would have ever guessed...but all is well. 3 weeks in her cast and a follow up xray reveals that her bones have healed. 

The rain has been NONSTOP. Goat maintenance has been constant and at times, a bit exhausting. The pastures haven't been dry for more than a day and it is one big squishy mudpit. At the same time, our barn has been on the final days of construction so we have had no choice but to leave the goats in the current wet soggy swamp of a pasture. Feet trimming and koppertox treatments for unhappy hoofs has been a constant around here. We are thrilled that our garden did so well...but what makes you happy makes you sad I suppose! Happy for the produce, sad for goat feet. I think we will make it out of summer intact and WAY SMARTER than we were prior!

My goal for the fall is to continue to pump out creative soaps for the upcoming season and to write a blog MORE than once every 4 months! Thanks for reading and please be sure to LIKE US on FACEBOOK!

What a few weeks we have had!
As you can tell, the website has a new look. We needed to "spring" things up a bit! So, here's a brief recap (ha! Like I'm capable of being brief) of the last few weeks:
1) Both Danica AND Carmel finally delievered the "goods". We have FIVE baby goats kicking, squealing, and bolting around the backyard. FOUR BOYS and ONE GIRL. Danica had triplets, Carmel had twins. They are now on the our Nigerian Dwarf Herd page and our facebook page is filled to the brim with baby pictures. They are FUN, the are HEALTHY, and the mom's are doing a great job.
2) We are a foster home! Eggbert and Tooters joined us temporarily from Five Points Farm North. We are happy to have them and as you can tell be the picture above, Tooter has found a friend in Audrey!
3) In approximately 6 weeks, we have had 35 baby New Zealand/California babies born. Actually, we had quite a bit more than that born but as I've mentioned before - baby rabbits and bad moms do not mix. We are weaning them and hope to have them posted for sale very shortly.
4) Our soap business has taken off! 56 bars of soap sold in one week with customers coming back wanting more! So, we've worked to make it happen and there is now a new link on our website called the FLG Farm Store. Here's where soap can be purchased, by the bar or in multiples for a discount. I can make local deliveries and also ship! Direct link is: http://flgfarms.com/flg-farm-store.html

We are going to keep a few of our basic but awesome recipes throughout the year (Nurture Your Nuzzler Facial Soap, Oats, Milk & Honey Emollient soap, Simplicity soap, and the Café Latte Soap will remain on the menu. Seasonal soaps will be added! We currently have (FOR SALE ON THE SITE yeahhhhhhh!!!) our Cocoa Mint Kiss Goat's Milk Soap. On the curing rack are mint soap, choco-nilla soap, an improved version of our CocoBanaNut soap, our bug-b-gone dog soap (shaped in dog bones and paw prints but humans can use fido's soap too!), and yes, Nurture your Nuzzler will be ready in about a week's time! This weekend: Lemon Poppyseed Loaf soap and Lavender Rain soap!
5) We have a new farm logo that will be making an appearance on our farm store and when we go to shows. Obviously, this website has a bit of a "feminine" nature to it, so to balance out the anima with the animus, our logo is bold and quite simple!

So, a busy few weeks we have had!!!

Danica, our sweet Nigerian Dwarf, is due to kid anyday now. She is HUGE. Her last two kiddings were both sets of twins. We would be rather surprised if there are only two in there this time. She eats, she waddles, and grows bigger...and bigger. We hope to be posting pictures of healthy, happy, bounding baby kids very soon!

Meanwhile, back in the workshop - soaps are being made all the time! Hershey, our one girl "in milk" right now is definitely slowing down on production but we still have plenty of milk frozen awaiting the soaping! This past week we revealed our "soap menu" and the soaps have been flying out the door! Our "Nourish Your Nuzzle" soap is GONE. The Vanilla Café Latte Soap is one shy of being gone and we have 3 more bars of the emollient soap. What a great start! I hope to try and get this site of ours to let me sell through the site so you reading this blog can get  some! I can take phone orders, payment through paypal, and I am happy to ship to anywhere in the United States. Send me an email at [email protected] and I will get you into our soap!!

We haven't been short on babies around here at FLG Farms. Since 3/9/13 we have added 35 new rabbit babies! Our first babies are now 6 weeks old and we will start to wean and find homes for them soon. Watch our "for sale" page if you are in the market for some cute and quality Californian bunnies!

I have found myself completely in love with soapmaking. Some people like to cook, others to bake, some find themselves knitting or crafting something clever (like my BFF and her magic jewelry making talents)...I have become addicted to soap making. Over the past few weeks, the fight has been to get Hershey, our beloved yet totally headstrong herd queen, to let me have the milk her triplets no longer seem to need or want (probably because she kicks them when they try to get any). My DH and friends built an awesome milking stand for me...BUT getting her into the stand is still something I'm certain would entertain anyone (especially our chiropractor who is directly benefitting from us having to lift a 100 pound goat into a milking stand). Now, we get just about a quart of milk a day, which tastes really yummy with those extra tylenol that are now part of our typical daily routine.  In fact, we've stopped having to buy milk from the store AND we have a surplus. So, I weigh it and freeze it and then make some of the most amazing soaps...and it's incredible to feel like I have a CRAFT!! Today I got some new molds and fragrances (including one called "Monkey Farts") to try. I can't WAIT!!!

This weekend's soapmaking (product pictured above just beginning to cure) turned out fantastic. This soap is make with olive oil, goats milk, tea tree essential oil, vitamin e, and bentonite clay. The incredients make for a light soap, with good lather but plenty of moisturizing qualities that leaves for soft skin. Tea tree is a great astingent agent, the Vitamin E an antioxidant, and the bentonite clay helps to balance oils in the skin. These bars will be ready in 4-6 weeks! I cannot WAIT to see how it feels as the smell is incredible and the bars are a lovely ivory. If you want to try some, leave a comment!

Blog attempt #1: The idea of a blog has always appealed to me. Kind of a public diary I suppose. It's a bit daunting to put ones thoughts, successes, and inevetible failures where others can read them. However, part of this incredible experience of "becoming a farm" has been through the ups and many downs of learning by doing. If I can share that and help one person, I'll feel like this blog might be worthwhile. That's assuming that maybe one person will actually take the time to read it! HA!

So, rather than try to catch up on all that we've done in the past year...I'll just start from today and maybe weave in the past 12 months over time.  I'll be quite candid...today sucked. The second day of spring and it was rather uhhhh..."brisk". Wind gusts almost knocking the chickens over and temps that never got above 36 degrees. I will proclaim here, as a key foundational truth....I HATE wind. The tarps we have over the rabbit hutches have been cheesegrated by the winds this winter. They will all need to be replaced or something more permanent will need to be constructed. I am hopeful that the three layers of blankets and tarps will keep the new (7 total) bunny babies from freezing. I'm tired of losing new bunnies to either the cold or new mothers, or both!

Our vet came today and gave Danica her CD&T and BoSe injections as we are one month out from her kidding. I am SO excited and nervous at the same time. I'm certain we are going to see triplets. We have ordered three girls...I hope mother nature doesn't mess up our order!

I cleaned and carved the most recent batch of goat milk soap. It smells amazing and the lime verbena scent fills our living room. The coconut fragrance is almost too subtle but still yum! They will be ready to sell in about 4 weeks! Hopefully by then I'll have some sort of logo/labeling figured out. I'm having a creative lag on that for some reason.

Ok, I could ramble on forever but I have papers to grade and for a first blog...this should cover it. :) TAH!