There's Still Time

Cocoa Lovers Basket

I bet, like me, your mailbox is full of emails from every store you've ever visited...and so I hesitate to add to your collection.  However,  I received several calls today asking if there is still time to order online and the answer is Yes!  If you have someone on your gift list that could benefit from some soapy love (or body cream or shampoo or...), we can help!  The Gift section of our webstore has some ideas to get you started.

If you are local, we'd love to see you in the Studio. Holiday hours continue through December 23rd.

Tuesday  10-5
Thursday 10-6
Friday 10-5
Saturday 10-5
Sunday 11-3
Closed Mondays and Wednesdays.

Wishing you sanity through this hectic week before Christmas!

THINK SNOW!

Craft Vermont - This Weekend!

If you are in the greater Burlington, Vermont area, please consider joining us at the Annual Craft Vermont show produced by Vermont Hand Crafters.  All artists are juried and all are Vermont residents.  It's a great show to kick off the holiday season--whether you are shopping for some very special people on your list, or just taking some time to relax and enjoy the beautiful art and fine crafts created by your neighbors.

Hours run Friday 10-8, Saturday 10-6, and Sunday 10-5.  Tickets may be purchased at the door.  Please visit Vermont Hand Crafters for more information.

Hope to see you there!  We'll be in the main ballroom, left side, second booth.

New Sunflower Boxes, Barcodes, and a Surprise Baby Chick

It's full blown summer here in Vermont. Bright orange day lilies grace the roadways and local corn has just arrived at market.  And I realized the front page of my website still talked about spring lilacs. Whew! Time has been speeding away while my head has been down in the weeds! Lots of news to share--

Our Vermont Sunflower Oil Soaps got a face lift!  The seasonally scented collection features local sunflower oil grown in the Champlain Islands, just a few miles from our farm.  Sunflower oil is naturally rich in vitamin E, and makes a nice, creamy soap.  We add organic goodies like fair trade cocoa butter to the sustainably grown sunflower oil, and then scent the bars with our unique fragrance blends made from pure, therapeutic grade essential oils.

When we started the sunflower line several years ago, we surveyed customers, friends, and most everyone we knew about what Vermont smelled like to them.  We got lots of great answers (hay, dirt, grass, warmth, fresh air, clean water, evergreens, wildflowers, manure....)  and used this information to help us create our fragrance blends.  The new scent names better reflect the seasonality of the line:  Muddy Boots + Green Shoots, Golden Summer, Falling Leaves + Flannel, and Snowbound. We also offer an Unscented version in this line for those who prefer no added fragrance.

We ditched our plain, earth toned boxes, and added some beautiful color with a view of the mountains across the lake from a sunflower field in the Islands. Our new boxes were painted for us by Vermont artist Gabe Tempesta, the same artist who has painted several of our Artisan soap wrappers, including the Honey Oatmeal, Our Farm, and Lilac wrappers.  What do you think?

We are running a special on the Vermont Sunflower Oil Soap Collection  right now to celebrate the relaunch. Five bars, one of each scent, for $23.00.  (Regularly $6 each. Save $7)

You might notice another packaging change on all of our products. We joined GS1 and have gotten ourselves barcoded.  Even our artisan soaps are sporting the familiar bar pattern! I feel like everything has gotten a tattoo. While admittedly this isn't terribly exciting, the barcodes make it easier for us to work with retailers who use scanning software to manage their inventory and checkouts, and that makes it easier for us to grow. (And I do think growth is exciting! :)

Speaking of growth, our hen house grew by one this year. One of our old hens decided to lay a few eggs in the very back of the hen house underneath a roosting post. She managed to hide the eggs from us for a week or two, and after we realized she was actually sitting on eggs and not just resting, we decided to let her try to bring the eggs to term.  We've downsized our flock considerably, and there was plenty of room to give her a private chamber. (Our hen house has three separate chambers.)

One by one she kicked out eggs until she had just one left. Eggs usually gestate for about 21 days. When 21 days had certainly come and gone--remember we don't know exactly when she got started--we figured it just wasn't going to be.  That is, until one morning I went into the hen house to do chores, and a very plump, definitely not newborn chick greeted me in the first chamber!  A very weary looking momma was running behind fussing.  Momma sure did a great job of keeping that chick hidden and protected under her wing, fed, and warm! Based on her feathering and size, we're guessing she was about 10 days old when we first saw her.

After a couple of weeks, Momma threw in the towel and decided motherhood wasn't for her.  Fortunately, another hen has taken over the mothering duties, and she and the chick are doing well.

We need a name for this very sweet little "surprise" chick.  We are fairly confident that she's a girl. She seems to be mostly Americauna with the classic whiskers but she has black and white feathers in a barred pattern.  We think maybe the barred rock rooster hooked up with her momma. Have any ideas for a good name? We'll send out a couple bars of our farm soap to a winning submission! Just email us your ideas, info@chasworthfarm.com. Thanks!

If you're local and haven't made it to the Burlington Farmer's Market yet, please consider stopping by. Produce is coming in quickly, with lots of beautiful and tasty varieties and colors.  Saturdays, 8:30-2:00, City Hall Park downtown.

All the best!

Spring Seasonal Soaps are Here!

Celebrate spring with our artisan seasonal soap collection, featuring three new soaps and one spring classic--all scented with pure, therapeutic grade essential oils!

Fun and flirty Pink Tangerine is a sassy blend of energizing essential oils, blended into our creamy soap.  The bright scent and all natural color of the bar screams SUNSHINE! 

Herbal Lavender Thyme is a soothing and purifying blend of sweet white thyme and French lavender.  This is a great scent to help clear your head of winter cobwebs. 

Dead Sea Mud + Kelp is made from a blend of antioxidant-rich kelp and imported Dead Sea Mud, known throughout the world to aid in skin detoxification.  We've added a generous amount of the Mud and the Kelp, and find it is a nice treat to rejuvenate dry, winter-weary skin as we transition to warmer weather and more exposed skin! 

Last, our Gardener's Soap shines this time of year as we sink our hands into dirt and prepare our gardens for summer. The soap offers gentle but thorough scrubbing from strawberry seeds.  We have found the seeds to be more effective and much less abrasive than other "scrubbing" ingredients like pumice or sand.  This is also a great soap for fishermen, mechanics, chefs, campers, and anyone else who gets their hands really dirty.  Scent is an herbal blend of essential oils that smells great and also helps cut odors. The bar is wrapped in a beautiful wrapper, hand painted by Debba Pearce. 

Welcome, Spring!
 

Frozen Pipes, Lost Driveways, and Warm Ocean Breezes

It's been a cold and snowy Vermont winter so far…and we’ve got at least two more months to go! We've had lots of days and even more nights with below zero temperatures. Add in the wind chill, and it's been down right chilly.

Living in a 200 year old house is a pretty nifty thing most of the time, but with temps this low, we reminisce about draft-free windows, protected pipes, and super insulated spaces. 

A couple of weeks ago our main water line from the well into the house froze. It could have been a disaster, but fortunately our drilling company was able to thaw it for us quickly.  Thank you, Chevaliers!

A couple of days ago we discovered that our so called frost-free hydrant in the barn was frozen. Guess the frost line has gone really deep this year. So, until we can get that working again, we're hauling water from the house in buckets for the animals. 

And yesterday, our tractor wouldn't start.  Seems the tractor's diesel fuel gelled in the fuel filter from the consistent, bitter wind chill. Fortunately, my husband knows all about gelled fuel in fuel filters, and he had the tractor running before long. 

After a couple hours of plowing today, we have found the driveway and our goats are happy to have a path around their exercise area. I'll work on freeing the gates and clearing the areas behind the barn tomorrow.

A couple of weeks ago I had the very good fortune of spending some time on a little island, part of the Yum Balam Nature Preserve, off the northern Yucatan coast of Mexico. While it always feels great to come home to Vermont, I have to admit that I've been spending a lot of time lately day-dreaming about warm ocean breezes, pink flamingos, and breakfasts of locally grown papaya, mango, and baby bananas. 

I'm not normally one to post vacation photos, but given our current weather situation, I thought I'd share a couple. Maybe they will warm you up just a little...and give you hope that summer is indeed coming!

Stay warm!

Ocean treasures....

Native iguanas.  Did you know they always travel in groups of 4?  Three females and one male.  

Warm water. White sand. Can you see the juvenile heron? The island is a breeding area for brown and white pelicans, herons, pink flamingos, and others.

This is Max, a scruffy but debonair little dog I got to know. I expected him to bark in Spanish.  

Flowers! FLOWERS! Gorgeous, wild bougainvillea. 

My hotel.  Coconut palms. Palapas roofs. GREEN foliage. 

This is El Castillo, a temple that dominates Chichen Itza, a Mayan ruin located on the Yucatan peninsula, and a World Heritage Site.  This has nothing to do with islands and warm ocean breezes, but if you ever have the opportunity to visit, take the time and go. The site is hard to describe, and photos just don't do it justice, but it is truly something to experience.  It will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. And if you're into the paranormal and extraterrestrial, just do a few google searches to learn all about the documented activity over the years, particularly at the time of equinox. National Geographic also has some good info. That will get your mind off of the cold for a while! :)