Goat Milk Stuff
Thanks for taking the time to keep up with Goat Milk Stuff!  We're shaking things up a little bit in 2016 and hopefully you'll love all of our changes.

Here's what is new this January…


Free Shipping

Happy New Year!  For all of 2016, we have exciting news!  Free shipping is now available on all orders over $50 throughout the year.  You don't have to do anything or add anything to your cart; it will all occur automatically.  

I would like to encourage you that if the $50 minimum is outside of your budget, try to find a friend or family member to split an order with you so you don't have to purchase a smaller quantity and pay for the shipping yourself.


Limited Edition Soaps

More good news! We have brought back the five most popular limited edition soaps as full-time soaps. These five soaps are Cucumber Melon, Dragon Blood, Kool Koala, Lilac, and Vanilla and they will be available year-round.  We know that many people are super excited about this!

The five holiday scents that we make - Cider Press, Cranberry Spice, Evergreen, Frankincense & Myrrh, and Pumpkin - will all be available starting in August 2016.  We will aim to have all five of them available through the end of December 2016.  We actually ran out of the Cranberry Spice sooner than anticipated this past year, so we made an extra batch that is sitting on the curing racks right now.  It will be ready mid-February 2016.  

The limited edition soap scents that are currently available while supplies last are: Anise Orange Scrubby, HazelnutHazelnut Scrubby, Mimosa MandarinPerfume Counter and Pumpkin


Custom Soaps

We are now offering soaps in custom batches that can be ordered anytime. You can get any limited edition scent as regular bars.  You can also get any of our scents in luffa soapsshampoo bars, and shaving soaps. You can even get your favorite soap scent (or unscented) with rolled oats or coffee grounds added as a scrubby soap.  




Pick Up at Farm

We're making big changes to our farm store - including doubling the space and adding lots of yummy food items - that will be ready in February or March.  (I'm hoping for February, but construction never goes as fast as I would like!)  

We encourage those of you who are in the area to come in and shop, but if you'd still like to place your order online, we have a different way that you need to choose "pickup at farm" as your preferred shipping method.   All you need to do is click on the top of the website where it says "Quick Order" then scroll down til you see "Special Offers" and "Pick up at farm".  Add that item to your cart and you'll be all set.


Goat Milk Food

Because we use our own fresh goat milk for all of our food items, the supply of milk influences our inventory.  We are now entering our "dry" period here at the farm.  Why?  Goats have a 5 month gestation.  We milk them during the first 3 months of their pregnancies and dry them off for the last two months so they can put their energy into growing their babies.  Because of that we won't have much milk for the month of January.  We will do our best to keep candy available throughout the month, but if you don't see something listed, it's because we're waiting for the goats to have their kids in February and start milking again!  We did breed a few goats to be due in January, but don't know if they got pregnant that month or not.  Zinnia and Valley are looking very, very pregnant, so if they are due in January, we'll have milk a little bit sooner than expected.


Price Changes

We spent this past month looking at all of our costs and how they have changed over the past few years.  Many of our costs have gone up, but with the space at our new farm, we've been able to buy more items in bulk because we have extra room to store ingredients.  There are two main changes we've made to pricing.

First, we raised the prices on the laundry soap due to the drastic increase in the cost of borax.  The cost of the individual laundry bar has not changed.

Second, we raised the price on some of our soaps (the first time we've done so in about 5 years).

We had two prices on our regular soaps - $6.00 for the soaps that use fragrance oils and organic soybean oil.  And $6.50 for the soaps that use essential oils and sunflower oil.

Rather than raising the price on all of our soaps, we're going to bring all of the soaps to the same price - $6.50. 

The prices on everything else (including specialty soaps like pet, shampoo, and shaving) remain the same. 

We apologize for the need to raise prices, but I work very hard to keep Goat Milk Stuff sustainable for both you, our customer, and my children's future.  The business has been such a blessing to thousands of people, including our family, we want to ensure that it is healthy enough to endure the inevitable variability of the marketplace and the economy as a whole.


Atlanta and Orlando 

The family is traveling to visit my parents in January and we will be making appearances on both Atlanta and Orlando television.  So if you're in those markets, you can try to tune-in.

As of right now we will be on Atlanta's "Atlanta Plugged In" show on CBS46 some time between 12:30pm and 1:00 on Wednesday, January 6th. 

We will be in Orlando on Thursday, January 7th for a 9:43am (approximately) intervew on Fox 35 "Good Day Orlando".

These are always subject to last minute changes, but as of now, those are the plans and we hope you can tune in.

Keep an eye on our Facebook page to find out if our itinerary will allow us to do a meet-up in either of these areas. We'd love to see you!


Newsletter Special

This month's newsletter special is Free Shipping over $50!  

In an effort to simplify our website, there will no longer be newsletter specials that require you to follow complicated directions. Instead, the newsletter will serve to notify you of what specials are currently taking place on the website so you can decide whether or not to take advantage of those specials.

For example, if you wish to receive the free shipping, all you need to do is add at least $50 worth of goat milk stuff to your shopping cart.


Change

For those of you who don't like change, I know that I've made a lot more changes than normal this month.  But I have spent so much time thinking and praying about how to make our website easier for everyone to use.  Not just the computer savvy person who is used to shopping online, but for everyone who finds out about our family and our goat milk stuff.

If you have any feedback you'd like to give me, feel free to email me at soap@goatmilkstuff.com.  Brett and I answer all the emails and we will take what you have to say very seriously.
 

Homestead Happenings

December is always a fun and crazy time for us.  The goats are settling into the colder weather, which means that the milking chores are slowing down as more goats dry off.  

Emery and Greyden do all the final winter harvesting and putting the garden beds to rest for winter.  We got a ridiculous number of beets and carrots this year.  This photo shows about 1/10 of the carrot harvest.  We not only use the carrots in soups and stews, but I cut them into sticks, steam them, and mix them with olive oil, basalmic vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and chopped fresh parsley.  Then I put it in the refrigerator.  My children will snack on them throughout the day.



This year, Emery and Greyden have also set up a greenhouse and are learning to grow winter food for us.  The learning curve has been a bit steeper than they thought it would be, so I'm not sure we'll get much winter food.  But they've learned a lot about growing stuff and worst case, we'll have a bunch of plants we can set out into the garden once Spring arrives.



The weather has been incredibly rainy this month.  That has slowed down our construction.  But the baby barn should be ready in time for the new baby goat kids to start arriving - which is good because they won't all safely fit in our existing barn!





The goats aren't looking as fuzzy as they usually do this time of year (because of the warmer than normal weather discouraging their winter coats).  But they are definitely starting to look pregnant.





As for the family, Greyden became a teenager this December!





















And two days later, Brett turned 19 (her last year as a teenager)!



















The family figured out that this is the most number of teenagers (five) that we will ever have at one time.  When the last three children (Hewitt, Indigo, and Jade) become teenagers, the older ones will have already turned twenty.

I find that completely mind-blowing and both happy and sad all at the same time.


 
We thank you so much for all of your support of our family and our business!  Praying you have a safe New Year and a wonderful start to 2016.


Happy New Year!
The Jonas Family

Jim, PJ, Brett, Colter, Emery, Fletcher, Greyden, Hewitt, Indigo, and Jade


 
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