Macon Maker Profile Series: Bone Creek Farms
Aaaaaaand we're back with the first College Hill Macon Maker profile of 2015! We want to celebrate the new year with our first applicant to go through the process of receiving a Custom Macon Made Seal through Modern Giant Design.
For a bit of background, here's the original Macon Made seal. We absolutely love it, so College Hill decided to work with Modern Giant Design to provide customized seals for our Macon Makers to place on any marketing or branding for their products and business. The idea here is to help promote shopping local while spreading symbols of pride in our gorgeous and truly unique city.
Our first applicant genuinely embodies this sense of pride in her city, her product, her work, and... her goats!
That's right, goats! The goats are the key to the success and drive over at Bone Creek Farms, run by Tisha and Alan Carr, Jr.
We met with Tisha and her adorable goats at the farm to learn more about her work and how she got started in the handmade, organic skincare business. Tisha makes tons of products on the farm from goats' milk, essential oils, and more all-natural ingredients.
Not only do Tisha's products look great, they all smell fantastic! But they definitely are not easy to make. Tisha gave us a behind-the-scenes look at her "soap room," which smells and looks amazing, but you can tell this is no leisurely hobby.
From the heat and chemicals to the scents and flavors, Tisha does it all back here.
She pours soap into molds and even cuts them.
Although she used to do that without this fancy thing!
Somehow, she gets these gorgeous soaps!
Tisha has hundreds of different flavored soaps for a variety of uses. You can find facial wash and pet soap bars among the Bone Creek Farms' wares. But don't forget: it isn't just soap!
Among the ingredient-conscious line of hair and skincare products, Tisha has also found ways to partner up with other local merchants and farmers to expand her products. One such partner includes a fellow market merchant and beekeeper who has hooked Tisha up with some natural and local beeswax for her new lip balm, which comes in an ever-growing list of flavors!
It's this business model of ingredient-conscious products in a family owned and operated atmosphere that has landed Bone Creek Farms a membership in Georgia Grown. But how did they start out? What got them in the hair and skincare business? Why goats?!
Glad you asked.
Tisha used to bake cakes on the side. Judging from the fact she's a whiz in the soap room, we can definitely guess as to how beautiful and delicious her cakes were. But she was always very ingredient-conscious, so she decided to get chickens on the farm to have fresh eggs for her cakes. What started out as a few chickens pretty much exploded into almost a hundred eggs (which usually become chickens). They had incubators in the house and little baby chicks just hanging out until they could be sold.
A lot of people don't know where you would even sell chickens. Luckily, your friendly neighborhood College Hill intern has been to a chicken auction or two before. They are... an experience. Any baby farm animal you could want can be found at a chicken auction, from pigs and puppies to ducklings and chicks. That also includes those precious baby goats. Tisha saw one at a chicken auction and fell in love. She had to have goats on the farm. Goats require a lot of prep work on the farm though, so Tisha and Alan cleared out some land and got the fencing up to give her new goats a proper home.
The idea was to invest in Nigerian Dwarf and Nubian dairy goats to be able to make Bone Creek a legitimate goats' milk dairy farm. What a lot of people don't realize is how intensive, and costly, it is to start a dairy farm from scratch. Between the equipment and licensing fees, Bone Creek Farms could not swing the finances toward Tisha's dairy farm.
By this point though, the goats were home and Tisha wasn't letting go.
Could you? No, I didn't think so. Tisha and Alan did their research, attended a symposium, and switched their focus to soap. And it was only soap for a while, until hunting season. Tisha and Alan both love to hunt, but the unscented shampoo and conditioner made for hunters to eliminate artificial fragrances was stripping Tisha's hair. She looked up how to make her own shampoo and conditioner, and Tisha found that she could create unscented bath products that still left their hair and skin healthy. I know a ton of people who would love to get their hands on something like that.
From then on, Tisha has been creating products that people use regularly with store-bought counterparts that are not always the best for our bodies. From shampoo and conditioner to body lotion and bug spray, Tisha makes it all right in her home and has been selling it at the Mulberry Market for almost a year and just started at the Wesleyan Market.
So what about now?
Well, now Tisha is looking to expand her market to online shoppers. She wants people to seek out her product more than just at the local market. She's looking for ways to streamline her packaging process so that she isn't hand-labeling every tube of lip balm and bottle of body spray. Tisha caught the market on all-natural at the best time, and she is trying to grow as it grows.
As a result, she's looking to become part of the Macon Made network and add a custom seal to her product. We are so proud to reveal our first official Custom Macon Made seal to a maker who has been trying to encourage shopping local and using her interests and resources to give back to the community from day one.
Now Tisha can use her own seal on any branding or marketing she chooses! You can too by applying for your own Custom Macon Made Seal.
Please support Tisha and Bone Creek Farms, and find out more about their current product stock, by giving their page a "like" on Facebook! See them in person at the Mulberry Market each Wednesday in Tattnall Square Park or at the Wesleyan Market on the second Saturday of each month in the main parking lot at Wesleyan College. The next one will be on Valentine's Day this year!
Oh, and some of the goats will "kid" this spring in March or April, so ask on Facebook if you can visit the farm to see the babies! They love visitors, and you can check out the farm. In the meantime, here's a picture of my favorite goat, Foxy Bella!