Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Cable.
Heather, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Like many, I’ve always had a preference for the simpler things; the taste of a garden-fresh tomato, the smell of newly turned earth, learning to do something for myself. I’m convinced that I was born a farm girl and doomed to live in town. As a child, I was able to enjoy country life with grandparents and family in the Ozarks, and visits to my best friends’ farm. It wasn’t until I sold my husband on the dream that we took the step to sell our house in town and move out to a much smaller home in the country with a lot more yard! Our farm was in the previous owners’ family for 100 years before we bought it, and we didn’t even get to walk the property it was so overgrown with ragweed, poison ivy, briars and wild roses. My husband was working a corporate job and it fell to me to renovate the house and clear the property, which was the beginning of our love affair with goats. It started with two Nigerian Dwarf does given to me by a friend. They were so sweet, great at eating things I was cutting down, plus transformed all that unwanted vegetation into milk. Next thing you know we had expanded the dairy herd. Soon I had more milk than my family could use and I took to making cheese and ice cream, but that just filled the refrigerator with more milk products. Finally, I started learning about soap making. Two years, and a great deal of research and refinement later, I was in the soap business.
While I was busy making soap, I was also turning all of the areas the goats were clearing into garden space and pasture. We’ve never had a tractor or heavy equipment beyond a little tiller, so all if it was done with hand tools and lots of woman hours. Our first garden was a ridiculous 2000 sq feet for me to maintain with a five-year-old and nine years old to help. I got back into canning, remembering lessons learned at my Granny’s home in the mountains and I began to sell eggs and vegetables as a sideline at my farmer’s market booth. It has always been important to me to be a good steward of this land, and we do not use any methods or products on our property that are not organic-approved.
In 2015 my husband had enough of the corporate world and quit to start his own business as a knife and tool sharpener. This meant a massive adjustment in income and prompted the question, “can the farm do more to support us?” We planned out more vegetable space, began growing cut flowers, and started selling our small-batch jams and jellies.
Currently, we have 1200 row feet of veggies and flowers in our production gardens as well as fruit trees, berry bushes and perennial beds. The farm work is still done primarily by me and primarily by hand. (My 4-prong fork is my can’t live without-it tool.) My now 12-year-old daughter is my right hand at farmer’s markets and my teenage son is an excellent farm hand and always willing to pitch in on the heavy lifting.
Nowadays, Canticle Farm can be found twice a week; at the Van Alstyne Railcar Farmer’s Market on Tuesday afternoons or the McKinney or Lucas Farmer’s Markets on Saturday mornings. We sell goat’s milk soap and a variety of other products year-round and seasonally we have fresh, local produce. Over the years, we have had many requests to visit the farm, so this spring we came up with the concept of a multi-market farm tour weekend- Rooted Farm Tours. These farm tours allow visitors to sign up online to visit several different area farms at their own pace, to see how the farmer’s produce the foods and farm-made products they enjoy buying at the farmer’s market.
It’s been a journey, and we are still just getting started!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I think many people who want to get away from it all on a little farm, under-rate the sheer amount of physical labor involved, and huge variety of skills that you end up learning to make a farm pay. I thought I was prepared; after all this city girl came from a line of hillbilly farmers, but manual labor is something you have to train for. Just milking one goat will give a newbie a serious hand cramp-believe me I was one. Running a line of fence, breaking ground for planting, building barns, learning about livestock nutrition, veterinary issues, natural pest control, mower maintenance, irrigation systems, the list goes on. As a concept, you know you need to know this stuff, but diving in the deep end requires a steep learning curve. You can of course, pay for someone to do all these things for you, if you have the income, or you learn to do it yourself like we did. There are many days when I collapse on the couch and think “it’s just too much!” At the same time, when you wake up to a bald eagle sitting in a tree not 50 ft from your back porch or walk to your garden to literally pick your dinner, it is all worth it.
Please tell us about Canticle Farm Texas.
Canticle Farm has always been about producing real food and real products made from scratch. We start the vast majority of our produce from seed in our greenhouse so we can tell customers “yes, that great tomato you bought last week was a Bonnie’s Best,“ or “We have the elephant garlic coming up for harvest soon.” Produce has as many nuances as fine wine, chocolate, or craft beer and we want people to be able to identify their favorite. By the same token our soap and body products are entirely scratch-made and we can discuss where our ingredients and packaging are sourced, from our certified sustainable palm oil to our 100% recycled soapboxes. We use these products ourselves and want to be able to reassure customers that we’ve done the research and there isn’t some terrible hidden environmental cost when you buy from us.
What were you like growing up?
I was an introvert growing up, loved to be outdoors, read books, and was crazy about horses. My parents were flower children, so we spent most of our vacation time camping and backpacking, It was always stressed to my brother and I that we needed to leave places better than we found it, and to appreciate nature in all its forms. They were also big on social service and meeting the many people in all walks of life they brought into my life really helped a shy girl to be able to connect with the varied customers I meet daily.
Pricing:
- Goat Milk Soap $6 bar
- Toilet Bombs $7 bag
- Clay Facial Masks $5
- Mango Butter Lip Balm $3
- Udder Balm $8 2 oz tin
Contact Info:
- Address: 10434 FM 1377
Blue Ridge, TX 75424 - Website: www.canticlefarmtexas.com
- Phone: (214) 460-5028
- Email: canticlefarmtx@gmail.com
- Instagram: canticlefarmtexas
- Facebook: canticlefarmtexas
Image Credit:
Sara Cable
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