Happy Holidays from The Healthy Porcupine to you

This year has been quite the experience to say the least. We hope you have all managed to stay safe and healthy throughout. We are grateful to have managed to stay safe ourselves. 2020 brought a number of changes to our personal and professional lives. On a personal level, we have had to change how we interact with friends, family, and hobbies. As avid Dungeons & Dragons players, we used to meet our friends three out of four weekends a month to play. For safety measures, we have had to shift this to a fully online game once a month, which as you most likely know isn’t the same. Not to mention our switch to at-home workouts or rather the lack thereof LOL. We have worked to maintain some degree of normalcy, but who really can these days (and that is 100% okay!) Professionally, we had to adjust to having all of our major events canceled, having to completely alter how we set up and did business at the New Boston Farmers Market, and transition to having to rely completely on online sales and wholesale. While we have experienced abundant changes, we know that many small businesses have had a terrible time this year and that many have not made it. That is why we wanted to share our story with you all and say how extremely thankful we are for our customers who have allowed us to continue selling our all-natural tallow soap.

 With that being said, our holiday plans will be very simple this year. We will be hanging out at home with our cats, playing our favorite games, and Darlene will be making duck for dinner. We are getting our duck from Greentwist Acres, a local farm located in New Boston, New Hampshire. Our honey is also locally sourced from DJ’s Pure Natural Honey located in Manchester, NH. We want to continue to support local businesses while we stay home and enjoy the holidays. Of course, we will be washing up with our Rosemary Mint Tallow Soap, so we can be clean and fresh for dinner. If you want to check out Darlene’s duck recipe you can find it here. Feel free to share your holiday plans with us in the comments or send us your favorite holiday recipes (we are still looking for side dish recipes.) We know the holidays aren’t the same this year, but they can still be good if you can find a way to connect with your family, virtually or otherwise, or just do something that makes you happy. If you’re still looking for holiday soaps for your home or last minute holiday gifts, check out our store and order now! If you need a last minute gift we have virtual gift cards that you share with family in person or online! Get into the holiday season with the smell of some of our all-natural tallow soaps.

 P.S. Santa said our Pine Tar 20% Soap reminds him of the soap back in his workshop. 😉

Why support your local soap business?

The process of making soap is unique to each brand. With ingredients being sourced from a variety of places and techniques utilizing each ingredient differently, knowing exactly how the soap is made can make all the difference. This is where small businesses, like The Healthy Porcupine, come in to provide consumers with trusted products that are free of chemicals, dyes, and unnecessary additives.

Creating a conscious product is not the easiest task for a brand, big or small. It requires time, knowledge, and money. Taking the time to research the best ingredients available and figuring out how to use them in your soap. Obtaining the knowledge to put your research to the test and make quality soap from quality ingredients. Spending the money necessary to make sure your soap is natural, healthy, and beneficial while also being accessible to your consumer. With that being said, the choice to formulate a conscious soap is just as good of a decision for the brand as it is for the consumer. Brands feel confident in the positive effects of their products (like our all-natural tallow soap), and in turn create happy, loyal customers!

At The Healthy Porcupine, we use locally sourced ingredients and a transparent production process that creates value for our brand and trust between us and our customers. As a small business, we can select the finest ingredients that will help our customers’ skin while also giving them the tools they need to choose a soap that is right for them. Big soap brands can provide the education and the high-quality ingredients, but the quality is often lost in production through the use of harsh chemicals and additives or mass production techniques.

With a small all-natural soap brand you have the transparency and authenticity that you don’t get from large corporations. Our all-natural conscious soap products come with a face you know, recognize, and trust. As a small business, we lookout for our consumers with our honest recommendations and demonstrated value for high-quality products. We hope you all keep supporting small businesses just like we do!

The Healthy Porcupine newsletter is coming soon!

Hi everyone! We hope you are all staying safe and healthy during these times. As I mentioned in our last blog, we are getting back into the swing of things and we are excited to be more active online and in markets. It has been a hard time for everyone in 2020 and we hope to continue giving you all the products you want and need.

With that being said, we are ecstatic to announce our new bi-weekly newsletter, beginning Monday, October 12, 2020. This newsletter will serve as a consistent method of communication between The Healthy Porcupine and our customers. Each newsletter will be different and will feature new products, new blogs, upcoming events, ingredient descriptions, upcoming sales, and customer feedback.

With this exciting newsletter comes an exclusive discount! We will include the promo code in our first newsletter. If you want to make sure we have your email or if you want to sign up, you can sign up here. Now is the time to sign up and stock up on your favorite items sitewide!

Stay tuned for our first newsletter on October 12, 2020, and look out for the discount code along with some recommendations of our favorite products. As always, we hope to continue to safely provide healthy, natural, soothing products online and in person. We will be updating you on in-person events soon. Stay safe and happy shopping!

 P.S. don’t forget to sign up with your email here!

The New Boston Farmers Market Opens This Weekend!

Hey there everyone! It’s definitely been awhile. I haven’t done any real social media updates or blog posts since the beginning of the whole pandemic thing because, well, I didn’t really feel like it was appropriate to do the whole marketing thing while so many people have been going through so much. It just felt off to me and then, as time went on, it felt more and more awkward to just pop back in like “Heeeeyyyy!” So…this is me just taking the plunge back into it.  

So, hi.

It’s been a busy couple of months and we’re very excited that the New Boston Farmers Market is starting up this weekend! It will be nice to get outside and see people, even if it’s going to be in a whole social-distancey manor. Yes, the market is going to look and feel a bit different this year, but I’m very thankful that we’re able to have one- especially since I believe it is extremely important (now more than ever) for the community to have access to local food and goods.

For a complete rundown of how things are going to look at the market in general, you can find that info on the New Boston Farmers Market facebook page. For my booth, specifically, here’s how things are going to go:

1.       I will be updating the website to allow market customers to order ahead of time by choosing the “in store pick-up” option for shipping. Please do so before 11:59pm the Thursday before the market so I have time on Friday to get everyone’s orders together.  

2.       Customers can also send me an email or a Facebook message with their orders ahead of time to either pay in person or I can send an invoice via Square (See #1 about time limits on ordering)

3.       No one is going to be allowed in my tent and all my product will be located behind me where only I can reach it. Unfortunately, this means that you can’t smell the soaps before making a decision (but I assure you, they’re all quite nice!).

4.       If paying cash, PLEASE try to give me exact change. All our prices can be found here!

5.       I may be wearing a mask and I won’t be able to give you a hug or have a long conversation this year, but please know that I am so thankful for all of you and am very much looking forward to seeing you, even if it’s from a bit of a distance.

Some of what I just mentioned will probably change a bit over time. I’ve never had to vend in a pandemic before, so we’ll see what works and what doesn’t and make changes accordingly! Thank you in advance for all of your patience and understanding and thank you for being there during these interesting times. Please feel free to email or message me with any questions, comments, or suggestions! Take care and see you on Saturday!

Back on Track

Wow. Okay, so things have been kind of crazy lately! We’ve picked up more wholesale accounts, we’re selling a lot more soap on both our website and Amazon.com, we sent in our application for the New Boston Farmers Market (opening day June 6th), and we’re busy preparing for the Made in New Hampshire Expo which is TWO WEEKS from today!

With everything that’s going on, we’re happy to announce that we’re FINALLY caught up from when we both got the flu back in late December/early January (hooray) and then, right after that, we had a bit of a production glitch which lead to a limited amount of soap and a very stressed out Jen and Darlene. You may have noticed that a lot of soaps are listed as “sold out” at the moment- don’t worry, we’re back on track and we’ll have product back in stock before the Expo! Unfortunately, we did have to cancel our appearance at the Danbury Winter Market this week, but we’ll be back for the last market of the season in April!

But yeah…things are good, Spring is almost here, and we’re starting to plan some hikes. We’re looking forward to getting back outside again! 

"...What's the Pine Tar for?"

Whenever we’re at farmers markets, we almost always have customers who look at our soaps, stop, and then curiously ask, “…what’s the Pine Tar for?”

Almost all of our soaps contain some type of essential oil, so the Pine Tar soap is vastly different and, admittedly, not for everyone. Because pine tar comes from pine stumps that are slow burned in a kiln, not only is it a thick…well…tar, it has a VERY strong odor. Now, because it’s a natural product, the odor can change from time to time- there are times when it smells like strong barbeque or a wood stove, and there are other times when it can be super faint and smell almost like the tar that’s used on highways. Regardless of the smell, pine tar is a very effective ingredient.  

Pine tar has been used medicinally for thousands of years due to its anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and antipruritic properties. It’s used in soaps and shampoos to help relieve symptoms of different skin issues such as eczema, psoriasis, dandruff, poison ivy, and various forms of dermatitis (1 ). However, you don’t have to be suffering from a skin ailment to enjoy our Pine Tar soap- many people just absolutely love the odor and how well it cleans.

1.       Barnes PhD, Tanya M. and Grieve PhD, Kerryn A., Topical pine tar: History, properties and use as a treatment for common skin conditions, 1/20/16, The Australian Journal of Dermatology, Abstract,  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5434829/