Update on Fair Trade Federation Conference and Frustrated Farmgirl

What’s up with the soap?

It’s been a while since I gave you an update on soap making. So much has been happening. I haven’t really been ready to talk about this publicly. Pretty much because I’ve been scared to. Scared that this business won’t happen. I’m still scared, but I’m tired of being quiet about it. So, I’m letting you in.

We’ve found a supplier for coconut oil out of Kenya. This was truly an answer to prayer that came through my Dr. Bronner’s contact in Sri Lanka.  We also have a wonderful shea butter vendor out of Uganda. I’ll be telling you more about these organizations once we’re under contract. Both vendors are addressing poverty in meaningful ways.

I’m in the midst of the permitting and licensing process with the city of Menlo Park. I’ve cleared the planning commission, and now I need to get the business license. I’m not sure what is going to happen next. But, I’m hopeful that we’ll have a business license soon.

We’ve also met once with an attorney to determine if the law firm is a good fit. We need to determine the legal business structure in order to submit the business license application. Charlie (my husband) is meeting with a tax CPA to go over the tax ramifications of our business structure.

Meanwhile, the type of shea butter that is produced in Uganda is different from the shea butter that I was using from Togo. It’s a different sub-species of shea nut. So, I’ve been making soap all week to make sure that this shea butter is going to work well. So far, I’m very pleased with the results. It’s been fun to be back in the swing of things with soap making.

The last time I gave you an update, I thought that we probably wouldn’t be moving forward. But, all the pieces seem to be falling into place. So, Charlie and I continue to put one foot in front of the other to take the next steps. Prayerfully. Listening. Discerning as best as we are able.  One thing I’m certain of is that God cares about the poor.  He cares about poverty alleviation.  If this business doesn’t go for some reason, we’ll move forward with whatever is next.  But, I do want to be involved in some way with Fair Trade and with addressing poverty through development.  It’s exciting for me to engage with people who care about this.  It gives me hope as I engage with vendors who don’t shrink from my hard questions.  Honestly, now that I think about it, I wouldn’t be appreciating these vendors so much if I hadn’t gone through the process of vendor after vendor being unresponsive after I asked hard questions.

I’m wanting to do some writing surrounding areas that my (hopeful) customers will want to know about. I’m asking for your help here. First, I’ll let you know my list of topics that I think people will be curious about. Would you help me by letting me know areas that you want to know about, but that I haven’t covered? Second, as I write about these topics, will you point out areas that aren’t clear so that I can fix them? I’m using the blog as a way to examine what people want to know about organic, Fair Trade soap. I’ve never done this before, and I would love it if you would help me with my blind spots.  Please- ask the hard questions.  If you think of it, others will too.

Here are my list of topics:

• Why do you have to use lye in soap?
• The Frustrated Farmgirl story.  How did we get here?
• Tell about each of our vendors.
• What’s unique about handmade soap in general and Frustrated Farmgirl soap in particular?
• What’s the line-up of scents?
• Why the name Frustrated Farmgirl?

What am I not thinking of?    Thanks for your help!

Jeremy Cowart

I just got turned onto artist Jeremy Cowart via the Donald Miller blog.  Check out this video on his portrait of Jesus.  Loved it.  Appeals both to my inner art geek and to my conviction that God came to earth in the form of Jesus for all of humanity.

Hanging Pictures with an Engineer

Charlie and I started hanging pictures last night.

Charlie is an Electrical Engineer by training. My degrees are in Philosophy and Art History. Our approach to picture hanging is different. Very, very different. I hold the picture up to the wall, place my finger where I think the nail should go and hammer it in. He looks at me and asks if I mind if he holds the hammer. He’s off to the tool box.

I let him have his way. You see, to do it correctly, it involves rulers and levels. And the right size nail. Because you don’t want to use a nail that’s too big and unnecessarily makes a larger-than-needed hole in the wall, do you? I’m shrugging my shoulders with you. But, if you’re engineer, these things matter. Some of you may not know that you’ve been doing it incorrectly all this time. If we’re hanging several pictures in a grouping, the spacing matters. As in to the millimeter. We look at each other. I smile and ask him if he minds if I blog about it. He laughs and says “go ahead”. We’ve been doing this for over thirteen years. Hanging pictures. Buying houses (which involves weighted matrices and questionnaires to be completed after viewing each house).

As newlyweds, we fought about these things. Now, for the most part, we laugh about them.

But, really, I have to ask you. Not that you’re taking sides. I wouldn’t ask you to do that. But, here’s his (pardon the blurry shot):

And, here’s one of the groupings that I hung today:

Is mine really that much worse than his, considering the fact that I used neither a ruler nor a level? I guess we’ll know when he gets home from work, because he will get the level out and straighten them. And I will laugh. Because I always do.

Garden Markers

I wanted to share these super cute garden markers with you. I love them. They’re home-made from mostly re-purposed materials. I saw them when I went to Hidden Villa with the children back in September. Hidden Villa has a wonderful teaching garden, where they bring school groups in to talk about gardening, nutrition, and a host of other topics. Their garden is divided into wonderful little plots where they use these markers. The stake that goes into the ground stays in place. Each stake has a sturdy cup hook screwed into the top where the signs hang. Then, each sign has a metal loop screwed into it so that you can hang the sign on the stake. Let me know if you have questions.

Love the sign below, too!

Gingerbread Houses

Charlie and I made gingerbread houses with our kids last night. More accurately, I could say that we assembled gingerbread houses. We bought these wonderful gingerbread house kits from Trader Joe’s. The gingerbread house pieces were already made. The candy was gathered. They even had powdered sugar in the kit for the royal icing. A very, very fun family activity for about $7 per kit. The kids had a fantastic time. So did we. With all the hard parts done for you, what’s not to love?

Round Two Testing Shipped!

Phew! It’s out the door. I have to say that the mechanics of testing are not my favorite thing to do. Getting a huge mailing ready harkens back to my days of working my way through college as a secretary. I’m glad that I had a great job that paid for school, but secretarial work is not my favorite. That being said, without the tedium of testing, I won’t know which soaps to sell. I sent out 106 bars to 63 testers. I had anticipated sending out more bars to more testers. What I didn’t account for was that some of the types of soap had almost zero demand (great information to have, by the way), whereas some were so popular that I ran out. If you’re one of the people that wanted to be a tester, but that didn’t get to be, I’m truly sorry!

So, now comes the fun part of seeing how the soap does in testing. I’ll be able to watch the survey monkey questionnaires come back. For me, it’s interesting to see what people think. Last time, what the testers thought was often quite different from what I thought. Thanks to some well-connected friends (I’m looking at you, Min, Denise and Linnaea), I was able to get the soap out to a very broad group of people. Thanks friends!

Do you know my customer?

I think I do. Let me describe her to you. No offense, men, but really, it’s mostly us girls who are into things like organic, hand-made soap.

- She’s an ingredient snob.
- Fair Trade may be a big deal to her. Maybe, though, she doesn’t realize that it’s a big deal for her yet.
- She’s into organic foods.
- If she eats meat, it’s probably pastured.
- She favors quality over quantity.
- Costco’s not her thing.
- She buys at least some of her food at Whole Foods or the local co-op.
- She doesn’t mind paying extra to get a high quality product.
- She loves things that are hand-made.
- Maybe she has her kids at a Waldorf school???
- Maybe she home schools?
- She loves great smelling girly stuff, even if she may not wear make up all the time.

Do you know her? Will you help me find her? Still trying to get more testers. While I’m happy to have anyone test my soap, I would like to make sure that the girl described above gets to try some, too. I need to hear what she thinks.

The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play.

Remember that wonderful first line of The Cat in the Hat? Charlie and I were joking about it on Sunday as we sat out in the pouring rain talking about soap with lots of people. Indeed, it was not too wet to play. There were a lot of hearty souls out quenching their curiosity about all sorts of things.

We were looking at the event as a “first” experience. Trying our best to prepare, but also trying to be gracious with ourselves as newbies. All in all, it went well. I presented a soap making demonstration to maybe 20-25 people. Everyone seemed to be interested, and there were a lot of great questions. Then, we spent the rest of the day at our table talking about the development of Frustrated Farmgirl soaps and giving out samples. (As a side note, if you’re giving out samples of soap on a wet day, it’s a good idea to bring something to put the soap in- won’t make that mistake again.) I was hoping to get more testers who don’t know me- so that they won’t be so nice in testing. As a side benefit, I got a better feel for what customers like. The Maker Faire crowd was partial to lemongrass, lavender and green tea with bitter orange. We’ll see what the testers say.

All in all, it was a good experience. Now, on to testing!

As a side benefit, our booth was between the steam punk guys and a wet felter. Soooo fun!

East Bay Mini Maker Faire

Come see us at the Mini Maker Faire this weekend. It’s this Sunday, October 24, from 10 to 5 at Park Day School in Oakland. We’ll have a table where you can come see us, and I’ll also be demonstrating soap making at 11 AM. As always, the Maker Faire promises to be a great time.

You can read what I’ve said in the past about the Maker Faire here and here. It’s anything you can make, or be involved in making. Recycling and upcycling any and everything. There’s going to be a booth where kids can work on their own Halloween costumes. You can bring a shirt and silk screen an image from a local artist. Learn about beekeeping, urban chickens, grey water recycling, composting. Lots of steam punk people watching. Oy vay- the people watching. It’s cyber/techo geek meets design snob meets artist. Even though I look like a nerdy mom, these are my people!

If you decide to come, you can buy your tickets on-line ahead of time and use “FARMGIRL” as your discount code at check-out to get 15% off admission.