Farm and Soap Updates

Anyone who's ever had chickens has seen the origins of the term "pecking order" first hand. Pecking and flapping at each other is pretty normal behavior for chickens, both hens and roosters, but in its extremes it can lead to severe injury and cannibalism. So let's talk about how to avoid this and also what to do if you have a severely "hen-pecked" chicken. Breed Choice At least some level of chicken aggression is tied to genetics. Breeds described as "nervous, restless and active" tend to have more aggressive tendencies, while "docile, calm, easily handled" birds are less likely to...

A question that I've been getting more and more frequently over the past few years is, "can I use your soap as shampoo?" I give the most honest answer I can, which is that I know many customers who use my soap as shampoo and it seems to work well for them. I actually feel pretty out of touch with the shampoo bar revolution, mainly due to the fact that, well, I don't use shampoo!  A Personal Hair Washing History Sometime back in the mid aughts I heard about an intriguing concept called the "no 'poo" method of hair washing....

The downside of farming in Vermont, especially farming that is focused on rotational grazing, is that 4-6 months of the year we have snow on the ground! Since I installed permanent fencing several years ago, I've been enjoying the ability to "graze" the cows on hay for a good part of the winter season. Here's how my system works. After grazing wraps up sometime in October, the cows head back to cow shed area to eat hay bales in the "sacrifice pasture". That means that this small area will get churned up, over grazed and muddy but all the other pastures...

The orders are really rolling in now for the holidays and I just wanted to thank all our customers, new and old, for supporting a small business! I also thought I'd give you a little insight into how we do shipping and manage soap pre-orders, so if that interests you, read on. For starters, when I say small business, I mean it. I currently have no employees, so marketing, shipping, manufacturing and admin is all one person (aside from the occasional family member drafted in to manage the accounting!) I do hope to grow beyond that some day but that is...

I've been making our "Farmer Pits" Natural deodorant for about seven years now but it feels like it's only in the past 2-3 years that I've gotten the recipe really polished. In the early days I experimented with baking soda before discovering the amazing non-irritating and excellent odor eliminating properties of magnesium hydroxide. The most recent big change was switching from beeswax to candelilla wax a few years ago. The problem with beeswax was that as I used it at higher rates to try and keep the bar solid in hot summer temperatures, the bars started to feel very sticky...