Click the picture below to check out the article Southwest Virginia Today published on Chick-a-Bee Farm.
This Ceres family has a honey of a hobby.
Since debuting their nature-inspired products at last year’s Festival of Leaves, the relatives have been as busy as the bees that provide the raw materials for many of the soaps, lotions and balms that they peddle under the Chickabee Farm label.
“We just play,” said Robin Repass who—along with her husband, Glen, and sister-in-law Janet White—harvests, stirs, cooks and packages a line of products made from honey, beeswax, plant oils, fragrances and – hence the “Chick” in Chickabee Farm – egg yolks.
“We don’t want an everyday job doing it,” added Glen who has plenty of other post-retirement projects on his plate.
The family members began their cottage industry in January 2009 after White, who lives in Maryland but comes to Bland County on most weekends, attended a beekeeping meeting that touted homemade soap.
“That’s how we started,” Robin said.
After whipping up some bars and a few other wares, the accidental entrepreneurs set up a booth on the fairgrounds last October during the annual FOL. The response was overwhelming.
“I didn’t have a clue,” Robin said of the unexpected demand for merchandise such as sweet yellow pear soap and blueberry lip balm.
Since then, Glen has added his own honey-producing hives, and the hobbyists have attended other craft shows in Marion and North Carolina. They’ve also filled special orders, set up at Bland’s Farmers Market and sold to individuals through word-of-mouth.
“We’ve gone global now,” Glen said, referring to an English family who made a purchase at the Hungry Mother Arts and Crafts Festival last summer.
During Christmas, the demand was high enough to impact Robin’s holiday plans.
“We were so busy getting orders out I didn’t even have time to decorate for Christmas,” she said.
Production days often turn into family gatherings with relatives pitching in to shrink-wrap gift baskets or stir the kettle of old-fashioned lye soap.
Many of the products are processed in Glen and Robin’s kitchen inside their Nebo Road log cabin. Honey, which is also sold in various sizes, is harvested in early summer and early fall.
“Everything is plant-based and honey-based,” Glen said.
It takes a minimum of four weeks to cure a bar of soap, which is crafted using water, lye, honey, beeswax and other plant oils. Scents include golden delicious apple, patchouli, fresh grass, lavender and more.
Lotion jars come in similar scents and also include vanilla sandalwood and mandarin orange.
After relying on recipes to get started, the family members have tweaked the ingredients lists to make the products uniquely theirs. They’ve also learned what does and doesn’t work with their line. For example, after their oily lotion bars collected dust during a dry, Southern craft show, the relatives switched the product to plastic jars.
Although he didn’t grow up as a hardscrabble pioneer, Glen believes it’s important to carry on the old traditions “just so the younger people know it wasn’t as easy as they have it now.”
“I’ve always liked doing older stuff,” he added.
Although they don’t have any “major plans” for the pastime-turned-small-business, Robin and Glen said the effort will likely grow once White retires.
Until then, they’re enjoying the interaction and fellowship that comes with a home-based enterprise.
“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback,” Robin said.
