Hobby Farms have had a steady interest through the years. The gratification that goes with producing your food, connecting to the land, and a slower lifestyle. It’s no wonder it draws so many towards that way of life. As a farmer, you should think of ways to expand the potential of your income sources. One avenue that’s constantly overlooked is infusing what your farm produces into personal care products. Or making a personal care line to offer in parallel with what is produced on your farm.
In this post, we hope to inspire ways to make personal care products as a source of revenue for your farm. We hope to inspire and provide the expertly formulated bath and body bases that make starting a personal care line easier to execute. Perfect for those thinking of other ways to expand income sources on their current hobby farm, or considering expanding into Agritourism.
Expanding into Agritourism
According to the National Agricultural Library (source 1), Agritourism is a form of commercial enterprise that links agricultural production with/or processing with tourism to attract visitors to the farm, ranch, or agricultural business for the purposes of entertaining or educating the visitors while generating income for the farm, ranch, or business owner.
Your Farm In a Bottle
Capture the essence of what your farm represents and produces in a bottle. People always want to reminisce about their trip, which is easily achieved with a bath and body product produced on your farm. You may offer fresh produce, but you want your customers to walk away with something they can use, not just eat. So listing items online or in your gift shop can provide a useful product that can remind them of that special experience.
5 Ways to Make Personal Care Products From Your Hobby Farm
- Dried botanicals in bath salts and bath teas: This is for the flower and botanical farms. Do you grow Lavender or herbs like mint on your farm? Once dried, you can easily add them to our Bath Salts or Fizzie Bath Powder so your visitors can soak in the memories later. Simply add your desired botanicals to our bulk bath salts and add fragrance or essential oils. A whole ten-pound batch takes minutes to mix, and with a scoop, is easy to package.
- Dried botanicals in body scrubs: A great way to stretch your dried botanicals is to add them as a topping for a body scrub. Adding freeze-dried produce to our oil-based scrub is also a great way to infuse personal care with your farm. Our Glowing Skin Sugar Scrub Base is an easy-to-mix base you add botanicals and fragrance to. Our bases take only minutes to mix, and you have a ready-to-go product.
- Infused body oils: Infusing body oil has never been easier with our range of 3 Body Oil Bases made specifically for the skin. Fresh or dried herbs can be steeped in our unscented body oil bases to make a botanical-infused body oil. We recommend using a fine sieve to eliminate big chunks of botanicals before bottling the final product.
- Hydrosol and toners: Small distillers are cheap and easy to use. Making your own hydrosol or toner from your farm-grown botanicals is simple and fairly inexpensive. When making your own toner, you would need the hydrosol from your botanicals and a water-soluble preservative at a bare minimum.
- Steep botanicals into our Body Spray Base: Using a diffuser pouch, you can steep botanicals into the body spray base. The alcohol in the base will help extract the benefits from the botanicals while preserving the final product. You will need to do your testing since natural ingredients have fluctuations in strength and quality.
Produce a product line that’s on brand with your farm.
Another avenue of making income off your farm is offering products inspired by what you produce on your hobby farm. For example, if your farm produces watermelons, and every summer you have a pick-your-own event. Consider offering watermelon-scented hand soap, lotion, or other personal care goods.
Natural farm products like milk are hard to safely incorporate into personal care products. Natural bacteria and yeast can spoil a cosmetic quickly. Our bases come in handy at this point. Take our PurelyMild Goat’s Milk Sulfate Free Wash Base for example. This base is expertly formulated, manufactured, and tested for stability, ensuring a consistent product. Simply add essential oil or fragrance and mix. Now you have goat’s milk hand soap to offer at your farm stand.
Here are some product ideas for hobby farms
- Farms that raise goats, sheep, or other livestock: Try our Goat’s Milk Lotion or soap scented with essential oils inspired by the dairy you produce on your farm.
- Do you have a pumpkin patch? Pumpkin-scented everything during fall is always a big hit. Offering pumpkin-scented fabric and room spray is a great complementary product to accompany your farm-grown pumpkin. Check out our Pumpkin Sugar Scrub and a Pumpkin Body Custard Base that are made with real organic pumpkin seed oil.
- Strawberry farms: The scent of strawberries is a popular summer fragrance choice. Although you may not be able to incorporate fresh strawberries into the product. Scenting personal care products like body wash or lotion with our Strawberries Fragrance Oil will remind your customers of the fun they had in your field, long after their fresh-picked strawberries are gobbled up.
- Apple farms: Apples are not only a treat, especially when picked fresh from the farm, but they also serve as a superfood for the skin and hair. Apple saccharides are a botanical extract derived from dried apples. This botanical extract provides intense moisture to the skin and hair. Adding this extract to an apple-scented product can expand your product offerings.
- Christmas Tree Farms: Holiday scented Pure Fresh Fabric and Room Spray is the perfect companion product for trees, real or fake. Using our Glamorous Shimmer Mist Base for a tree flocking topper leaves the most beautiful veil of shimmer on the tree. Our sprayable formula has an exact, minimal mess application. No messy powders that can fall all over the place. Plus, you can add fragrance to the base for extra Christmas vibes.
Expanding product horizons for your hobby farm
Whether you’re trying to think of income for your hobby farm, or have a thriving agritourism farm. Personal care is a highly underrated market. Find all the bases on our website to make starting your line easier. Follow our blog for more recipes and inspiration.
How do I use a bath and body base?
First, add fragrance, colorant, or extracts to the pre-formulated base and mix well. Then fill the final product into your bottles. This process makes you the manufacturer. These bases are made to be easy to use and have a consistent formula.
Can I add fresh lavender to lotion?
You should never add fresh botanicals to lotion. The water in the plant matter can cause a colony of bacteria to make the product go rancid. That is why we recommend using cosmetic-grade additives in the water-based formulas.
Can I add dried botanicals to any bases?
You should only add dried botanicals to either oil-based or dry bases. Some examples are sugar scrub, body oil, bath salts, and bath bomb bases.
Can I add fresh milk to lotions and body washes?
You should never add fresh milk to a lotion or wash base. Doing so introduces bacteria and yeast that cause the product to spoil.
Sources:
- https://www.nal.usda.gov/human-nutrition-and-food-safety/local-foods-and-communities/agritourism#:~:text=Agritourism%20is%20a%20form%20of,%2C%20ranch%2C%20or%20business%20owner.
