Wendy and Karlyn Hartman share how their family turned homestead resources like goat milk, lard, and tallow into effective, traditional skincare products that support true skin health. From simplifying cold-process soapmaking to explaining why animal fats have been trusted for centuries, they break down what actually works and why so many people struggle with modern commercial products. We also dive into Karlyn’s quest to perfect natural deodorant, what makes shelf-stable soap, and the blessing of building a family business centered on growth, unity, and learning through the ups and downs of homestead life!

In this episode, we cover:

• Wendy and Karlyn Hartman’s homesteading journey and how they grew from beginners into educators and business owners
  Building a family-run skincare business using resources produced directly on their homestead
• Why traditional animal fats like lard and tallow have been used for centuries in soap and skincare
  The key differences between lard, tallow, and modern commercial skincare ingredients
• How goat milk supports skin health, moisture absorption, and barrier repair
• Why many people tolerate animal-based fats better than common plant oils
• A simplified approach to soapmaking that makes it accessible and safe for everyday homesteaders
• What lye is, why it’s necessary, and how it fits into traditional soapmaking
• How cold-process soap cures, how long it lasts, and why it’s shelf-stable
• How Karlyn developed a natural, aluminum-free deodorant after reacting to conventional products
• Encouragement for homesteaders walking through hard seasons and learning through experience

Thank you to our sponsors!

KubotaUSA.com | Providing the right equipment to keep us moving, shaping, and growing America’s farms, fields, and construction

Premier1Supplies.com | Your one-stop shop for a variety of homesteading supplies and expert advice

About Wendy & Karlyn

Originally from Southern California, our family ventured to Central Virginia in search of a more peaceful way of life. We moved to our own homestead in 2019, and it soon became our little farm. Along with our four children, we’ve raised American Guinea Hogs, Nigerian Dwarf, Mini Nubian & Nubian Goats, Chickens, Turkeys, Geese, a beautiful Old Time Scotch Collie and a very spoiled house cat. We strive to make homemade fashionable, and have sought after ways to live off the land using permaculture strategies and silvopasture-raising animals. We enjoy soap making, gardening, canning, music, crochet, jewelry making, painting, wood carving, and volunteer firefighting (husband). As we search for our piece of peace, we are enjoying reducing our carbon footprint, while striving for overall wellness.

Resources Mentioned

Purchase Wendy & Karlyn’s book, Soaping Clean with Dairy and Fats from the Homestead

Check out the products mentioned in this episode (and more!) at the Adoratio Farms Online Shop

Connect

Wendy & Karlyn Hartman | Website | Instagram | Instagram

Homesteaders of America | Website | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Pinterest

Traditional Skincare From The Homestead: Soapmaking, Animal Fat, and Family Business Transcript

Amy Fewell Welcome to the Homesteaders of America Podcast, where we encourage simple living, hard work, natural healthcare, real food, and building an agrarian society. If you’re pioneering your way through modern noise and conveniences, and you’re an advocate for living a more sustainable and quiet life, this podcast is for you. Welcome to this week’s podcast. I’m your host, Amy Fewell, and I’m the founder of the Homesteaders of America organization and annual events. If you’re not familiar with us, we are a resource for homesteading education and online support. And we even host a couple of in-person events each year with our biggest annual event happening right outside the nation’s capital here in Virginia every October. Check us out online at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. Follow us on all of our social media platforms and subscribe to our newsletter so that you can be the first to know about all things HOA (that’s short for Homesteaders of America). Don’t forget that we have an online membership that gives you access to thousands—yes, literally thousands—of hours worth of information and videos. It also gets you discount codes, an HOA decal sticker when you sign up, and access to event tickets before anyone else. All right. Let’s dive into this week’s episode. 

Amy Fewell Welcome back to the Homesteaders of America podcast. This week I have my friends and HOA vendors and sponsors, Wendy and Karlyn Hartman. Welcome to the podcast. 

Wendy Hartman Thank you. 

Karlyn Hartman Hi. 

Amy Fewell You’re welcome. So this is a mother and daughter duo that we love at conference. If you’ve been to a conference, you guys have probably bought soap from them and talked to them, they’re full of information. But why don’t you guys tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? 

Wendy Hartman All right. Well, I’ll start. I’m Wendy Hartman. This is Karlyn Hartman, she’s my oldest daughter. We have four children. We were a military family in California and moved out to Virginia in 2019 before COVID. And actually, the second month we were here, third month, we went to Homesteaders as just participants. And we knew we wanted to have a mini farm. We didn’t really know what that looked like and we were wanting a lot of information. And so we were following Justin Rhodes and Rebecca at the time, and they had put up on their social media that they were coming as speakers. And so I thought, Hey, that’s only like two hours from us, two and a half hours. We could totally do that. So, we came and it was Karlyn and myself and my youngest daughter, Reagan. And we had just gotten pigs and we knew nothing about any other animals and my husband had to stay behind with the boys to start building infrastructure and fencing and all that for the pigs. And we just learned so much that weekend. We were inspired. We had never seen, I mean, I was a former science teacher, middle school, and we did lab and we did dissections and things like that. So I was kind of used to all of that, but I had never seen, you know, processed chickens before. So we watched Joel do that and we’re so inspired. 

Karlyn Hartman That really amazed me, sitting back, eating breakfast. I looked over at my mom and I was like, “You know, I think we could do this.” 

Amy Fewell And there you are, doing it. 

Wendy Hartman Yeah, and so we started with pigs and we did things backwards completely. Pigs, goats, then chickens. And actually, I think we did meat chickens before we did layers. So everything we could do wrong, we did do wrong, but we’re still here to talk about it. And we’re thriving somehow. If we can do it, anybody can do it. 

Amy Fewell Anybody can do it, right? That’s right. Exactly right. Okay, so let’s talk about your business a little bit. What do you do now? Now you’re a vendor at HOA. So talk a little bit about that. 

Karlyn Hartman So we make natural goat milk products made with our goat milk on our farm, and we don’t have a very large herd. Right now, we’re about 20, but we’re always growing with our new babies. We just had some babies born. But our company uses all natural ingredients only. We try to do as much organic and 100% all natural, 100% pure as we can. We use natural preservatives in our products, in our fresh milk products, but for our soap, we use our raw goat milk. And we use natural colorants as well, and also natural fragrances and essential oils. 

Amy Fewell I love that you said, “We don’t have a big herd, but it’s about 20.” 

Wendy Hartman Actually, I think we’re at 24 with the new babies, if I’m counting right. 

Amy Fewell That’s a pretty big herd to most people. I think most people have like four. 

Wendy Hartman Yeah, and four is the perfect size. When we talked at Homesteaders, that’s exactly what we said, “Four is a great starter set.” So, mini herd. 

Amy Fewell Yeah. So 2019, you started homesteading, and then last year, 2025, you guys actually became speakers at HOA. So you guys that are listening, let that encourage you. It doesn’t take 20 years for you to become an expert in something. It can just take a few years and a whole lot of experience fit into those few years, as we homesteaders learn very quickly that you’re going to learn a crash course in whatever you decide to take on pretty fast. So I want to talk about soap because you also wrote a book about soap. So why don’t you kind of talk about that book a little bit? There it is. Soaping Clean. 

Karlyn Hartman It’s called Soaping Clean with Dairy and Fats from the Homestead. So our process is very simple. If you can bake a cake, you can make soap. And so we simplified our recipe down and we want homesteaders to use the dairy and the fats that they have on their homestead so they don’t have to source other ingredients. We’re trying to use up what we have in our freezers and in the fridge with all the milk that we’re getting. So that’s mostly what our book’s about.

Wendy Hartman And Karlyn, her expertise really started with the larding process—we call it larding, everything’s within soaping, larding—but larding is kind of her specialty. And so we joked last year that she’s the Lard Queen. So our process started off a little bit harder. We used to grow our own pork, and so we would to save back the fat, and she would cut it up and we would grind it with our just home grinder and process it just by heating… And there’s instructions in the book on how to do a picture step by step. And that’s what we would use. And we would do it all from the beginning to the end. Now we’ve got to the point where we need more fat than we can render ourselves for our soap company. And so now we have relationships with two farms that are local. And we barter our finished soap products with their lard that they give us. So they grind it for us. We still render it ourselves, but we get it now ground, so it’s a lot easier. It cuts off hours off of our process and it’s a simple thing for the processor to do because they just have one more step to run it through and grind it. They’ll do that for free if you ask them to, so that’s another really cool tip that we put in the book. 

Karlyn Hartman And when we render our lard, it’s about 120 pounds at a time. So for us, we need large quantities of it. 

Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s incredible. 

Wendy Hartman And in our peak season, Karlyn’s larding about, let’s see, once a week. So we’re going through over 480, almost 500 pounds of fat a month. 

Karlyn Hartman That’s just pig fat. We also are making tallow products now too. So we barter with the same farmers to get both, which is cool.

Amy Fewell We’re taking a quick break so that I can tell you a little bit about one of our 2025 sponsors. We are honored to have Kubota as one of our sponsors this year. Over the past 50 years, Kubota has evolved from newcomer to neighbor to partner in pursuit of the American Dream. They’ve grown together through community by providing the right equipment to keep us moving, shaping, and growing America’s farms, fields, and construction. Hundreds of millions have been invested here at home, for over 7,000 American workers to fabricate, wield, and assemble with domestic and global parts. 1,000-plus Kubota dealership locations contribute to local economies and invest in the people that have lived there for generations. Constant evolution and innovation keep Kubota forward-looking and focused on working together to build a better future for all of us. You guys know them as the orange tractor in the homesteading and farm world, but we know them as friends and sponsors, as Homesteaders of America conference sponsors this year. Make sure you check them out at KubotaUSA.com.

Amy Fewell Okay, talk to us about fat. This is a topic—like we see it everywhere: tallow this, lard that. And I think sometimes people catch on to it just because it’s the thing right now. It’s been the thing for centuries, right? It is very much a historically based product. So what’s so special about this? What’s the difference between tallow and lard and modern soap and lotion and all of that?

Wendy Hartman So, the cool thing about fat is if you’re a homesteader, you’re going to have fat. And usually it’s a byproduct that doesn’t get used. It’s one of those things that, you know, they don’t know what to do with. And let me take a step back. So the reason why we have these bartering relationships with these farms is because of the fact that they had so much and they were literally burning it. They were filling their freezers all year, when they couldn’t sell it, they had to use the freezer space for more meat coming in for the next season, and they were burning the fat. And it’s such a waste. It’s liquid gold to us, and so once we found out that, you know, we have something you need and you could have something back for that, we both benefit. But the product itself, the fat is so fabulous because it’s a natural SPF, most people don’t know. The moisturizing quality is amazing, so it’s anti-aging, our soaps help with psoriasis and eczema. We can’t guarantee that, of course, the FDA and all that, but we know that customer after customer come back to us because the combination of the goat milk, but the fat itself, the lard is so fabulous for your skin. Most people aren’t allergic to that, unless they’re Alpha-gal, of course, we have those allergies, but most of the time people aren’t allergic to, whereas they are coconut or olive or shea. 

Karlyn Hartman Or Almond oil. 

Wendy Hartman Yeah, almond oil is a big allergen, too, for some people. So most people just throw it away. So if you’re a homesteader, if you’re raising pigs, you have that. Cows, even chicken fat, you can make chicken fat or duck fat soap, which we have a recipe in our book for. 

Amy Fewell That’s awesome. Now talk about the milk aspect of it. So you’re making milk soaps and milk based products. How does that help with people’s skin health overall? 

Karlyn Hartman So the cool thing about goat milk is it’s really high in selenium. And a lot of people who have psoriasis and eczema are selenian deficient. And so what the selenium does in the goat milk, it actually opens up your pores to accept the moisture. So you could just lather on Vaseline or any other lotion from the store. And what happens is your body doesn’t accept it. It just continues to stay dry. It’s like a barrier. But what the selenium does is it opens your pores up to accept the moisture and rehydrate your skin. So it’s really cool how that works. 

Amy Fewell That is really cool. Okay, so some people are terrified of making soap. I think we’ve all heard those stories, like you’re going to burn your skin or your eyes or something while you’re in the process of making soaps. So why don’t you just take us through like a basic soap recipe? I mean, obviously people can’t see it, but I know you guys said you do like a simple recipe. So how do you simplify that? What does that basic recipe look like? 

Wendy Hartman So, our ingredients are simple. You’re just doing an unscented tallow or lard bar only, it is so easy. You just need three ingredients. You basically just need the liquid, which we substitute water out for goat milk or cow milk or sheep milk, whatever you have. You can even use store-bought milk or even kombucha, lemonade or coffee. I mean, you don’t have to have a dairy source right away if you just wanna get started making soap, which is really cool. And again, our book goes into detail on all the cool things you can do to customize. So if you’re just talking about a dairy soap, we freeze it first. That’s kind of our little secret there so it doesn’t burn. So when you add the lye to it, it gets really hot. It’s an exothermic reaction, so it heats up really fast. And so what can happen is if you are using fresh milk (which we are, we’re not pasteurizing, it’s just raw milk) and if you just use the raw milk at room temperature or fridge temperature, it heats up so quickly that that liquid can turn and burn a little bit. So that kind of is where people kind of bring in the thermometers, we need to keep it at certain degrees in order to make this work, that work, but the trick is, if you freeze the milk, you don’t even need thermometers to make it. It’s so simple. 

Karlyn Hartman And our recipe is also a cold process recipe. There’s three different types of soap making. Well, technically only two, hot process and cold process. Melt and pour isn’t really soap making through the process, but our recipe is a cold process. So we freeze the milk and then we get lye, 99% lye (sodium hydroxide) or above. That’s the purest that we can find. And then we get our fat, so you could do deer fat, you could do pig fat, you could do tallow, which is beef. So we actually don’t heat up any of the oils. Lard is usually semi solid at room temperature. So we work with that. If you keep your house around like 70 degrees, that works for us when we make soap. We just are well ventilated. We keep the windows open. 

Wendy Hartman And we do use proper PPE, so if you don’t wear glasses… Our glasses are sufficient, but when we teach classes or people that don’t have glasses, we provide goggles. Goggles, aprons, gloves, and if you are just starting out, we recommend long sleeves just to cover your arms too. But I think, you know, coming from a lab science background, people make it a lot scarier than it has to be. It’s not like an acid where it will burn through your skin. If you do get lye on your arm or your hand, it tingles. It definitely stings a little bit after a little time, but not right away. You can easily rinse it off with some warm water. Even soap helps counteract that tingling feeling. So it’s not as scary as you might think it would be, but ventilation is important. So we leave the cross windows open when we’re soaping, and make sure we have a fan if it’s a still day, so we’ll get that air moving. And you can even make it outside if you’re really concerned.

Amy Fewell So what is lye? I know that’s going to be a question that people ask. What actually is lye and why is it necessary in the soap making process? 

Wendy Hartman Yeah, so people have been using lye or sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide for thousands of years, it’s just wood ash. So there’s potash and lime that they add to it to make it usable. So modern day, they kind of add some things to it. But if you’re just using wood ash, you can make a liquid soap very simply. And actually one of the last recipes in our book is using just ash from our wood stove, and making soap with that. So it is a process. It’s time consuming. So you’re not going to save yourself any time doing that. Actually, it’s going to make the process a lot more difficult, but you can do it. So if you don’t have access to store-bought lye… But lye is labeled as drain cleaner, but there’s food-grade lye, and people use it for as a preservative. They use it as a cleaner. They use it as that drain unclogger. Use it properly, it’s safe. Use it improperly and of course, that’s where you can get, you know, issues with that. But yeah, lye is just sodium hydroxide and we always compare it to, you know, it sounds scary, but oxygen and hydrogen together make water, but separately they’re very dangerous and unstable. So it’s the same like lye, sodium and hydroxide, when it’s not combined in a reaction, a chemical reaction, it can be very caustic, which pH scale, we’re talking really high, opposite of an acid, but it still can be dangerous if misused. So you don’t want to pour some on yourself and let it sit on your body. You wanna rinse it off. 

Karlyn Hartman It’s in between a 13 and 14 on the base side, so it’s pretty high. 

Amy Fewell Okay, so that’s really cool because a lot of people—I know we have some people who are like, “I don’t even care about the science of it, I’m just going to make soap”—but other people love learning the scientific part of it and how it works. And then, you know, homesteaders are like, “Well, if I can’t buy lye, how do I make it?” So that was really cool that you have that in your book. I have your book. I did skim through it, and I looked at the dairy recipes, especially because we have so much dairy. I know, Wendy, you and I have talked about that before. And so it’s on my list—that’s why it’s right here—to make some soap this year. And so, it’s fun that you guys have simplified it for the homesteader and also given them the option to create it completely from scratch. Because you know that some people are for sure going to do that. And it’s nice to have that resource. Like guys, I encourage you to buy books like this—and we’ll have this one in the show notes—because what happens if the world goes crazy and you know what? Soap is one of those amenities that you’re going to want to have if you can’t purchase it at the store. Which brings me to my next question: if I make soap, if someone decides to soap, I know you get a big brick of it. How long does that soap last before it goes bad or what does that look like?

Karlyn Hartman So soap takes four to six weeks to cure after you make it. So what that means is just it sits out and it dries and it has to have airflow. And so once it’s cut into the bars, you can keep it like a big brick, but at that point, you won’t be able to cut it after unless you use a hot knife. But what the curing process does is, just like wine, it gets better over time. It gets harder and sometimes the scent will fade after a couple of years, depending on what you’re using in it, but it’s good forever. It’s shelf stable forever. 

Amy Fewell Okay, that’s good to know. So I can make a bunch of soap and it would last forever. 

Amy Fewell Oh, yeah. And the great thing is, I mean, you do have to cut it depending on the time and the ingredients. So in the book, we talk about how we did a ton of experiments with different types of cow milk, A1, A2 and different proteins and sheep milk and goat milk. We did goat fat, we did sheep fat. So every different combination, we tested the time before cutting and it’s amazing how quickly some of those need to be cut. So just finding that right time to cut. We make the loaves and we cut it into seven or eight bars, depending on our home use or selling, and your mold size, of course. When we first started, we measured the weight of it when we first cut it, and then we kept measuring every week. As soon as it stops evaporating liquid, it’s cured. So that’s why it takes between four to six weeks, depending on your ingredients. 

Amy Fewell Yeah, that’s super cool. Okay. So we go through the process. We make the soap, we cut the soap. Also, I think you guys have said this before, and maybe it’s in your book, there’s also molds you don’t have to cut too, right? Like little individual ones. So that kind of takes out some more work if people want to do that. Oh, shampoo bars. You guys make shampoo bars, which I love the shampoo bars! Let me give you a little testimony. So I’ve been doing the shampoo bars for a few years now and sometimes, like what you just said, I have gotten psoriasis in my head, and almost always I get it after I have had a baby. And the only way I can get it to tame down is with your shampoo bars. If I use store bought shampoo, it will totally inflame everything that’s going on hormonally. But if I use your shampoo bars—and I’ve even just grabbed a bar of your soap to use as a shampoo bar—it works really well for that. And I lose a lot of hair too, after I have a baby, and I have noticed that my hair grows back quicker when I use your shampoo bars versus using something store bought. So yeah, I mean, we are users of your soap and your shampoo and I got your lotion for the first time when we had our most recent little one. And so it works great. And so I know that people are gonna love your book because it’s the same recipes you guys are using for your soap and stuff. 

Amy Fewell A quick interruption in our podcast episode for today to bring you a little bit more about one of our sponsors, Premier 1 Supplies. At Premier, they’ve been providing electric fencing and electric netting, sheep and goat supplies, clippers and shears, ear tags, poultry products, and expert advice for over 40 years. I can personally vouch for Premier 1 Supplies because they have been a tremendous help for us personally here on our homestead, and they’re a tremendous help every year when you visit them at our conference. They have fencing, sheep and goat supplies, clippers and shears, all of those things, and even poultry supplies. Make sure you check out Premier 1 Supplies at Premier1Supplies.com.

Amy Fewell Okay, so what’s one of your favorite types of soap to make for each of you? What is your favorite kind to make? What is your favorite scent that you love the best? 

Karlyn Hartman Well, lately we just started doing a coconut lime, which was a special request from a customer. It’s very good. I’m enjoying that one.

Amy Fewell Okay, so our best seller hands down is oatmeal and honey, forever, forever, forever. And just shortly after that, we started making pine berry and that will be my all time favorite. So in shampoo, in soap, in pit paste deodorant, anything pine berry, I’m like, that’s me, until we get to fall on it’s pumpkin vanilla, hands down. So that’s my personal, but pine berry is just a combination of lingonberry and fir, and so it really is more seasonal, but I use it all year. 

Amy Fewell Now, you mentioned the pit paste. I forgot that you guys make that as well, and my husband uses that. So talk a little bit about that. Talk about the science behind it, how it works, and it really does work. We recommend it to everybody. It’s so hard to find a natural deodorant that actually works. And so why don’t you tell us how that works? 

Karlyn Hartman Yeah, so this is my baby. I’ve been working on this for a couple of years now, and I’ve really figured out the recipe. It’s taken a long time to refine it. But we started with just a basic goat milk deodorant recipe and then just added the stuff we wanted to add to it. But the cool thing about it is we use arrowroot flour, which is arrowroot powder, it’s just ground down more and that helps soak up the moisture and the smell. But we also use baking soda. I know some people are sensitive to baking soda, so if you’re sensitive to it, then I would avoid ours or use less of it, but that also helps. 

Wendy Hartman And all of our products are aluminum-free too, so. But the reason why she started making the deodorant… You should talk about that, because that…

Karlyn Hartman Yes, so I’m very sensitive. Same thing with you—the psoriasis in your hair. I can’t use regular store-bought deodorant. Honestly, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, lotion—I have to be really careful with makeup and moisturizer and everything else as well. But even with natural products, they don’t always disclose what’s in their products. And a lot of people use rosemary as a natural preservative in their products, but they don’t disclose. It says natural preservatives or whatever. And so I have an allergy to rosemary, and especially with the deodorant in my armpit, it’s a really sensitive environment. And especially in the summertime, when you use deodorants and it’s rubbing, if you’re out doing chores, you’re getting real sweaty, so I would have these big red, leathery ring rashes in my armpits, and I couldn’t even walk it hurt so bad. I was like, “Mom, we need to figure out something to do because I can’t be working out on the farm and smelling bad, so we got to figure something out for me.” So we just started playing around with just a generic recipe and then we found what works good for us. 

Wendy Hartman She did, it was all her. 

Karlyn Hartman Well, she was my test subject too. 

Wendy Hartman I already tested them all, yeah. But we found out early on when she was little, I think she was about two years old, and we found that she’s allergic to salicylic acid, which is in artificial colors, fragrances, dyes, rosemary, almonds… 

Karlyn Hartman Tomatoes, cucumbers, just like a bunch of random things. 

Wendy Hartman She had an EpiPen until she was eight years old and she started growing out of those allergies, but when she got to puberty, it was so difficult to find things commercially that she could use for acne products. She struggled with cystic acne for years because of the fact that it was like this bad cycle. She didn’t know what was causing what. Was it the allergy? Was it gut health? So it took her a lot of time to get that under control. And then when she was in college is when we got the farm and I started having all of this abundance of pig fat and we had goat milk and I’m thinking, how in the world can we combine this to do something beneficial just for our family? I was never, ever thinking that we would sell anything. And she started being my test subject on the soap and the shampoo bars and it worked great for her skin. She was like, “Mom, my face has been this clear ever!” And then that’s kind of how it evolved to a, “Do you sell that?” “I don’t, but…” So we started just making things for our family and, you know, it kind of spread on to laundry soap. And speaking of laundry soap, that is a fabulous way to use up your extra soap that you have. If you don’t use it up as fast or if you just like making more sense of things, you can grind it down and make laundry soap out of it. 

Amy Fewell Yeah, and we’ve used that laundry soap and it works. Mark brought it home from one of the events and I was like, “Wait, where’d you get this from? I didn’t know they made this too.” And it works really well. I love that you are doing this as a generational business. Let’s talk about that. You know, Karlyn, you are young and you could pick anything in the world to do, but you’re helping your mom do this. So kind of talk about that and how it works for you guys. 

Karlyn Hartman Yeah, so I actually went to college at a local university here, Liberty University, and I graduated with a bachelor’s of science in business and music. So in high school, I really got deep into music and I was focusing on that. But then when I was at Liberty, I kind of shifted my mindset because she started growing the business. And I was just coming over on the weekend, seeing what she was doing, getting really intrigued. She was doing all these little science experiments with things, and I’ve always loved science. And so when I was at school, I was taking science classes too, and business classes to help her with the business and see how we could take it from a small family business to something more and hopefully be able to support my future family. And so I’ve just been in love with every part of the process. And it is very hard work between the farm and the animal management and the milk, and just always staying on your toes. There’s so much to learn when it comes to homesteading, but it’s way more fun than sitting behind a desk and doing a desk job. So that’s just my heart. I’m just a creative person. So I needed to be doing something different, and I just fell in love with what she was doing. And we butt heads sometimes, but we have a great time. We have a good time working together. 

Wendy Hartman Yeah. And it’s fun too, because she’s obviously here with me because she’s kind of the face of the farm when we go places and talk and she wrote the book together and she does all of it, but it’s fun because my other kids are also involved. Like right now, while we’re sitting here with you, I had my third kiddo out milking with me before we started, and then my second kiddos out there is going to be running around and doing the hay and the watering and stuff for our goats. So it has become a full family business. My husband does work a regular job, but he’s able to help us with infrastructure and power and building anything that we need. He’s right there to move goats if we need help or whatever. So it’s a family business, there’s two of us sitting here, but it really takes the whole family. And when we travel for things like Homesteaders or different events, we do a lot of artisan markets and stuff like that, my other kiddos are there to jump in. We’ve been very blessed that we don’t really need a farm sitter per se. We have built-in farm sitters, so I recommend big families. It’s really helpful. But then as the kids have been growing, what’s been surprising is our youngest, Reagan, she used to be so shy. And she came to Homesteaders with us the first year as a vendor. I think that was in 2021. But she was selling jewelry. She was very quiet. She was very shy. She just wanted to do something. And my goodness, she’s now a junior in high school. She came with us to Homesteaders this year and she ran the whole booth.

Karlyn Hartman Yeah, while we were speaking and teaching the workshop, she was there with my grandma and my extended family just running the booth. 

Wendy Hartman She was in charge. She was the last word on everything. It’s just neat to see their skills develop through the different aspects of farming, which is not typical. We wouldn’t have thought, let’s get a farm and learn business skills, but that’s kind of what has happened to us. 

Amy Fewell Yeah. A generational homesteading and business and all of that is something we’re talking about in the upcoming HOA magazine. And so it’s kind of fitting that you guys are on this episode showing that, showing people doing that. And even if for some reason, one of your kids decided to step away and do something else, they’ve gained really valuable skills just growing up on a homestead and helping their parents with business. So I really love that and just setting up the next generation for success, instead of not knowing how to do anything, right? And kids can do hard things—like your daughter, she ran that whole booth by herself and she’s not even an adult yet. So it’s amazing what can happen when we let our kids take control of something. So I love that. Okay, so we’ve taken the fear out of soaping. We have talked about all of the scientific aspects of natural skincare, which I absolutely love. You guys who are listening, obviously anyone can do it or you can purchase from people like the Hartman family. I leave the last part of every podcast open to our speaker, our guest, to just share anything. Anything that’s on your heart, whether it’s about this topic or a different topic, I don’t even care. But now is your open floor time to share whatever you would like to share with our HOA audience. 

Karlyn Hartman So lately, there’s been a lot of struggle on our homestead, and we’re trying to give you the joy and the peace to just keep pushing forward and keep pressing forward because there’s always going to be seasons where it’s really hard, but just don’t give up because there is a lot blessings that come out of it. And we’re learning a lot of hard lessons right now and just character development, and so just doing our best to motivate you guys to just keep moving forward. 

Wendy Hartman Yeah. So some of the stresses that she’s alluding to is we’ve had a surprised birth on the pasture this year. We’ve never had that before. Usually we’ve documented everything in new to a T. We did pregnancy tests. One came out negative, again negative. So we thought, okay, she didn’t take. She gave birth out in the pasture last week and that was a huge surprise. And unfortunately, we tried to resuscitate the baby, we had a very hard loss. And so three days of working tirelessly, 24/7 and there’s sometimes you just do it all and it’s not enough. But then other times, it’s like the seasons change and you just feel the Lord leading you into a situation where you’re vulnerable, but you’re learning at the same time. So no lesson is a lost lesson. If you’ve hit a wall, push through because you don’t realize how you might be touching someone else in your struggles or how you’re getting filled by someone else. So we’ve, you know, we’ve been having some family issues too. We had to travel a little bit. My father-in-law is going through hospice and so it just kind of brings it full circle where you realize how important family is and how everybody just bonds together and jumps in when needed. It has just been really special for us in the last couple of weeks. 

Karlyn Hartman And the community too. Just amazing how community reaches out and touches you. We’ve had a lot of people make meals for us and we weren’t even directly going through those things, but just with my parents traveling, I had to watch the whole farm and take care of that. And that was stressful, but I made it through. And it’s teaching me skills about how to take care of my own farm in the future. 

Wendy Hartman And actually, that’s a huge celebration in our family this year. So Karlyn’s getting married in April and she’ll be starting a family of her own. 

Amy Fewell Yay! Congratulations! 

Wendy Hartman And we’re very blessed. We absolutely love our new son-in-law. He’s come to Homesteaders the last two years and is very like minded. And so I’m excited to see what they do on their property because they have a farm property, too. So we’re just really excited to see how the generation continues. 

Karlyn Hartman And fully raise some beef. 

Amy Fewell Yeah. You can have some grandbabies soon. She said beef, I said babies. 

Wendy Hartman And we’re already starting to think about hay bartering, beef bartering. We don’t have the property here to raise cows, and so we’re excited. She’s got grass, so we’re really thrilled about that. I have grass envy. So she’s got grass. So anyway,  she doesn’t move out and leave us until, of course, April, when she gets married. So I’ll hold on a little bit longer. And it doesn’t end for Adoratio Farms. She’s continuing. She’s not far, she’s only 20 minutes away or so, so she’ll be commuting in and working on the farm and still doing all the fun things.

Karlyn Hartman Yeah, the commute just goes from 10 seconds to like 30 minutes. 

Amy Fewell Very cool. I love it. Well, thank you guys for joining me on this podcast episode. I think people are going to find great value in this to see how simple it is to take control of this part of their life and kind of remove themselves from the skincare system of relentlessly buying things that are not good for their body. And so now they don’t have any excuse. They’re going to find out when they buy the book, how to make soap and products and they’re going to use up all that lovely fat that they are getting, or milk, or whatever it is, and they’re going to live healthier. So we appreciate you guys. I will see you soon at the May event. Right? Yes. And I think you’re bringing baby goats. Is that right? 

Wendy Hartman Yeah, we did last year, too, for Kidsteader. 

Karlyn Hartman Yeah, future babies, so they’ll be about six to eight weeks old at that point.

Amy Fewell So you guys who are coming in May, you might get to snuggle some baby goats. We’ll get to see. All right, friends. Thank you for joining me for this Homesteaders of America podcast and we will see you next time. Happy homesteading. 

Amy Fewell Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to this week’s Homesteaders of America episode. We really enjoyed having you here. We welcome questions and you can find the transcript and all the show notes below or on our Homesteaders of America blog post that we have up for this podcast episode. Don’t forget to join us online with a membership or just to read blog posts and find out more information about our events at HomesteadersofAmerica.com. We also have a YouTube channel and follow us on all of our social media accounts to find out more about homesteading during this time in American history. All right, have a great day and happy homesteading.