Welcome to Our Growing Homestead

Welcome to Our Growing Homestead!

I’ve been trying to decide what the very first blog post on our website should be about. Soap? Goats? Farm life? All the chaos that comes with trying to do all of those things at once?

Then I realized the best place to start is simply with who we are and why we do what we do.

Our Growing Homestead is our family farm here in South Dakota, where life revolves around animals, gardens, kids, projects, and usually a whole lot of mud. We raise a variety of animals, but our dairy goats have become an especially important part of both our farm and our business.

What started as a way to use the wonderful milk our goats provide has grown into a line of handcrafted goat milk and tallow skincare products that I am incredibly proud to make.

From Our Farm to Your Home

One of my favorite things about making our products is knowing exactly where so much of what goes into them comes from.

The goat milk in our products doesn't come from a carton at the grocery store. It comes from our own dairy goats—the same girls we feed, milk, care for and probably talk to way too much every single day.

Our products are made here in small batches, with ingredients chosen for a reason. Goat milk and grass-fed tallow are at the heart of our skincare line, and from there I get to have a little fun creating different soaps, scents and products.

There is something incredibly satisfying about taking milk from an animal you've raised and cared for and turning it into a beautiful bar of soap that eventually ends up in someone else's home.

More Than a Soap Business

But Our Growing Homestead isn't just about soap.

It's about our farm and everything we're learning and building along the way.

There are goats to milk, animals to feed, gardens to grow, babies being born, fences that inevitably need fixing, new ideas we're probably starting before we've finished the last ones, and plenty of moments where things absolutely do not go according to plan.

That's part of the reason I wanted to start this blog.

I want this to be a place where I can share more than what fits into a Facebook post or a product description.

I'll be sharing life on the farm, our animals, what goes into making our products, new things we're working on, lessons we've learned, and probably some of the funny and completely ridiculous things that happen when you share your life with a whole bunch of farm animals.

I also want to take you behind the scenes of our skincare products—why we use certain ingredients, how our soaps are made, what makes goat milk special, and what actually goes into getting a product from our farm to your bathroom.

We're Still Growing

The name Our Growing Homestead couldn't fit us better.

We're always growing.

Sometimes that means adding another animal to the farm. Sometimes it's learning a new skill, planting something we've never grown before, creating a new product, tackling another project, or dreaming up what we want this place to become next.

And sometimes growing simply means learning from something that didn't go quite as planned.

This farm and business are constantly evolving, and that's exactly what I love about them.

So whether you found us because you love handmade soap, you're curious about goat milk skincare, you enjoy following farm life, or you just want to see what kind of trouble we've gotten ourselves into this week—I'm glad you're here.

Welcome to Our Growing Homestead.

I can't wait to share more of it with you.

— Julia