♪ ♫Just sit right back, and you’ll hear a tale…. ♫ ♩ No, it’s not Gilligan’s Island but from some of the shenanigans that have gone on at the farm, it’s close! I wanted to give you a little insight into who we are, where we have been, and where we hope to be going.

Atad Valley Farms did not start recently. It has developed over the past several years. It all started out about twenty years ago, when we lived in Western North Carolina. We began a small hobby farm with gardens, chickens, rabbits, beef cattle and goats. Throw in a couple of guineas and of course of faithful livestock guardian, a Great Pyrenees named Samson. It wasn’t much but it was supposed to be just for us to live a more “back to the basics” lifestyle. At one point, we had 16 Nubian goats that we milked. We had more milk than we knew what to do with. There are probably people out there who could drink a gallon or more of goat’s milk each day, but we were not those people. Leading us to make cheese and yogurt and ice cream…but we still had more milk! Being of a “waste-not-want-not” frame of mind, we looked at other ways we could use the milk instead of just tossing it out. That’s when we discovered you could use goat’s milk in soap. Thus, our journey in soap-making began.

A couple of verses of Scripture had lingered in my mind:

The lambs are for thy clothing, and the goats are the price of the field. And thou shalt have goats' milk enough for thy food, for the food of thy household, and for the maintenance for thy maidens.

Proverbs 27:26-27

Our goats would be the price of a field! And that seemed like a lot of value to me back then…and even more so today! I started a blog called Price of a Field. It was simply meant to document the journey of our little farm. It didn’t last very long due to other obligations (writing a blog post every day or two is extremely demanding of time). During that time, however, a desire to start a farm that I could make a living, support my family, and provide the community fresh, naturally raised produce, began to take shape. I spent countless hours researching the best ways to make a career from agriculture. I committed my vision to paper for the first time in 2013.

The vision was grand in scale. I wanted to own a piece of property large enough that I could raise my animals, grow a market garden or CSA, and have a campground and small cabins on another part of the property. At the time, agri-tourism was a big thing. People would take a weeklong vacation to stay at and experience life on a farm. My thought was, “people would pay me to help out with the farm chores? I’m all in!” From what I can tell, the fad has since passed but the dream of a farm remained.

However, life happens and circumstances change. I took a new, higher paying job, sold the goats, disbursed the farm and moved to east Tennessee. The new job demanded even more of my valuable time – so much so that I did not even have time to think about a farm. So, the dream faded to the back of my mind. But a couple of years ago, a thought about having a farm rekindled the dream. I again started researching ways to make a living in agriculture.

We had a friend ask if we knew of anyone that made and sold goat’s milk soaps. We had to tell her that, no, we did not know of anyone but that we used to make goat’s milk soap ourselves. She asked if we could make some for her. We obliged, even though we did not have goats any longer, to provide the milk needed for the soap. I sourced a local farmer that could supply the milk we needed to make the soap. I continued looking into other products that we could make using goat’s milk. As a result we started a little “soap-making business” for friends and family.

You might ask, how did you come to the name Atad Valley Farms. Well, that’s interesting. I knew that Proverbs 27 had to be part of the name, but Price of a Field Farms didn’t seem to work. I started studying the words of the verses in the original language. The Hebrew word used for goat is not the more common word for goat. The word used in Proverbs 27:26 is attud. Its root is atad, which means to be ready, make ready, be prepared. Wow! What is a farm for but to be prepared…prepared for winter, prepared to help others, prepared to make a living. Verse 27 states that there would be goat’s milk enough for your food and the food of your household and even for the sustenance of your maid servants. Thus, Atad Valley Farms was born.

We still do not own a property for the farm. That will come in time as the Father leads. What do we do in the meantime? Well, we do what we can with what we have. We can still get goat’s milk from a local farmer; we have a small area to garden where we are currently living. But that’s not enough to make it, you say. I agree. However, there are other ways to make the dream come to fruition.

While we are still making our goat’s milk soap and bath & beauty products, we are going to move forward with the gardening part of the plan. We are going to be partnering with several other small, local family growers where we can supply a mobile farmer’s market. The idea is to have a trailer, similar to the one in the picture above, and operate it on a similar model to a food truck; that is, we will move it around with fresh produce to different locations in the surrounding areas each day of the week. We have already purchased a trailer and are working on plans to make it what we envision. It will take time, but we are committed to having it ready for the upcoming 2026 spring growing season. It is a dream that is starting to flesh out. My plan is to continue to blog about our progress as well so you can join us on this journey. We are looking forward to sharing our journey with you in this forum and hopefully be able to meet in person some day. Blessings.