Fresh From the Farm Blog

Have you ever wondered how we make bar soaps? It involves following a recipe just like in cooking a favorite dinner. Our bar soaps are made following a hot-cold process. Some of the ingredients we combine are goat milk, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, water, olive oil, shea butter, clay, avocado oil, fragrance oils and color. Then the magic begins as the warmed oils are carefully mixed with the other ingredients in a specific order. The soap batch is poured into lined molds and the color is artistically swirled into the molds of scented soap creating a work of art....

Today (Feb 14) is Valentine’s Day and we all usually try to do something special for those near and dear to our hearts. It might be cooking a favorite meal, serving breakfast in bed, giving a thoughtful gift of flowers or candy, gifting a book, concert tickets, or a spa treatment. And there is the ever-popular heart shaped box of chocolate candy screaming “BUY ME” at the supermarket. So much pressure to be thoughtful and caring on this one day. How cool would it be if we treated all those we love with this special celebrity treatment EVERYDAY?  HAPPY VALENTINE’...

With a little bit of warmer weather and rainfall, I started thinking about our garden and remembered that it is time to start tomato seeds indoors for transplanting into the garden after frost danger is over. I love to start tomato seeds with my grandchildren, they love to get their hands dirty and the process is really easy. For years when I ran a commercial greenhouse, we started seeds in special germinating flats and set them on heating mats to encourage germination. With my grands, I use Styrofoam egg cartons. Use scissors to remove the top of the carton and...

Where has this month gone…we were just celebrating the new year and now an entire month has passed! Here at Fredericksburg Farms we are readying our Spring and Summer 2024 offerings. With the strange weather we seem to be experiencing, some days it feels like Spring and then we get a cold snap and frost on the ground. I guess it is best to be prepared for anything that might come our way. We have seen snow, ice, power failures, and even 90+ degree days during the winter months in some years. Whatever the weather might bring here at Fredericksburg...

We love our big Fredericksburg Farms garden each year and start planning what to plant in January. Seed companies send out their annual catalogs after the first of the year and although most companies have their offerings online now, many still send a physical catalog in the mail. Those are the ones I look forward to perusing on a rainy day with a cup of hot tea, reading the descriptions for the juiciest tomatoes for canning, the best varieties of bell peppers, onions, squash, okra, lettuces, spinach and Swiss chard. Our offerings don’t often look like the pictures in the...