Prairie Creek Soap Works

Hey guys, my website just updated and every product disappeared, again! And of course, production is first and foremost! So call, message or email me your orders until then! I gotta make SOAP! Big Love, Monica https://www.soapmakermonica.com/shop/?v=7516fd43adaa

Sending YOU, my amazing customers, BIG LONG HUGS of Gratitude!

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We invite you to join us on the farm for our annual Spring Festival!

Entry to the festival is free.

Strawberry U-Pick and prepared foods will be available for sale.

Additional U-Pick days will be available in April and May.

Live Music
Food Trucks & Farm to Table Menu

Explore the farm on a guided walking tour with farmer Amy Van Scoik

Join Farmer John for a tour and Q & A Session. Bring your farming questions!

Pick your own organic strawberries (weather & field conditions permitting)

Shop our farm stand for locally grown organic veggies and goods

Educational workshops

Kid's activities

Helpful Tips & Info

Parking is limited, please plan to carpool.

RSVP to help us be prepared, and stay in touch in case of any event changes.

This is a 100% outdoor event. Handwashing stations will be available and we hope everyone will use them!

Good items to bring: picnic blanket, camping chairs, hat, closed-toed shoes or mud boots, refillable water bottle or cup, reuseable shopping bag, umbrella or rain coat.

Cash, credit cards, SNAP, and Fresh Access Bucks accepted on site for farmers market items.

Please leave pets at home.
March 16th 1 pm to 6 pm
4317 Northeast US Highway 301 Hawthorne, FL 32640

Partly sponsored by Visit Gainesville / Alachua County, FL

Let Facebook remind you choose “interested” or “going” https://facebook.com/events/s/spring-festival-strawberry-u-p/756152065878212/

Free RSVP at eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2024-spring-festival-strawberry-u-pick-live-music-food-trucks-and-more-tickets-801794778767

Yum 🤤 always brings the most delicious pastries to our market

“…how we grow our strawberries as certified organic producers and the differences between conventional and organic practices.

The politics and rules around market signage and marketing claims vary from market to market. We truly appreciate good enforcement of marketing claims, because it gives consumers confidence to shop locally.

We know you don’t want to pay for one thing and receive something different than what you were promised. We’ve been asked by a market manager to educate our customers about our production practices, so here we go!

No-Spray has No Meaning
With Plant City strawberries making their way up and down the great state of Florida, you’ll begin to see “no-spray” claims posted at various farmers markets. Some of these claims are made by the growers themselves so you could ask them what they use. Some “no-spray” claims are made by people re-selling berries that they purchased either directly from a grower or at a produce terminal market.

While backyard gardeners might swear by compost alone and get satisfactory results, the truth is that any grower on a commercial scale who is trying to pay bills, put fuel in their trucks and stay in business for the next year is not doing “nothing” to their crops. You just have too much on the line to not actively manage your crops.

Growing organically doesn’t mean just putting it in the ground and ignoring it until it’s ready to harvest. If it was that easy, organic wouldn’t cost more than conventional products, and most farmers wouldn’t bother to spend the money on chemicals in the first place!

I know this may sound obvious to some readers, but I have actually had a visitor to my farm ask “Why does it cost so much? I mean, the sunshine is free, the rain is free.”

Organic farmers face all the same challenges of weather, maintaining fertility, insect pests, predation by animals, fungal and bacterial plant diseases that conventional farmers do. We just use a different toolbox to deal with those issues. A toolbox that aims to protect soil resources, our groundwater, wildlife diversity and the health of humans working with and eating the crops.

The claim “no-spray” and “pesticide-free” are completely unregulated, unverifiable and there is no legal accountability for anyone using this marketing claim.

In contrast, Certified Organic has a legal definition by the USDA, imposable fines of up to $10,000 for violations of using the term, and our farm and all of our records are audited annually by an independent inspector. Certified Organic doesn’t mean perfect, but it is the next best thing to growing it yourself (or being really good friends with a farmer).

If you buy berries from anyone labeled “no-spray” please take a moment to ask “What do you use for fertility and pest and disease control?” rather than “Do you use any spray?”

A good grower should be able to list off for you the materials they used during the season, and why they used them. Ask them specifically about herbicides for w**d control, fungicides for fungal diseases, pesticides for insect control.

Ask them how do they keep down w**ds? Do they put strawberries in the same field each year? How do you control for soil borne diseases? Is their farm open to visitors or the public? If you are buying berries from a non-farmer vendor, can you trust that person has taken the time to verify a grower’s claims that they don’t spray? Do they take a look in that grower’s barn to see what chemicals are stored there?

Do they ask to see pesticide application records? (Which all growers in Florida are legally required to maintain, although they do not have to submit them to any regulatory agency for review).

Do they ask about pre-plant treatments of soil, or applications of materials using drip irrigation systems which technically wouldn’t be a “spray?”

I don’t have a problem with people selling produce someone else grew as long as they represent it that way. I have problem with people making claims that they can’t back up or haven’t verified.

According to the USDA, the term “NO SPRAY/PESTICIDE-FREE” should indicate that no pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides have been applied to the crop at any point in its production.

Unfortunately for strawberries grown commercially by any mid to large size grower in Florida, “no-spray” is not NOT REALITY.

Conventional strawberries are grown using synthetic chemicals at many points during production, including soil fumigation prior to planting, with products like K-PAM or Methyl Iodide to kill diseases left from previous seasons.

This is why the question about WHERE you grow the strawberries each year is important. No grower can put strawberries the same ground year after year without using soil fumigants.

For a complete list of products approved for use and recommended for strawberry production – see this publication by the University of Florida in the Vegetable Production Guide. Thirty three out of thirty six pages are devoted to a list of chemicals to control everything from fungus to arthropods. This production guide describes methods used by most growers in Florida to produce strawberries.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/CV134.pdf

🍓 How is our farm different?
We want transparency and honesty in our food – and that’s why we currently only sell fresh produce that we grow [also partner growers we personally visit, checking their barns, and their growing methods making sure they’re up to our standards.] at the farmers market, and why we are certified organic. To us, it’s the only way we could ever really know what went into the food.

We will tell you openly that we do apply pest control products to our crops and to our strawberries – we even use, gasp, a sprayer!

The important thing is what is in the spray tank, not the physical act of spraying. We have used diatomaceous earth and pyrethrin sprays for insect control. These products, while safer than chemicals used in conventional agriculture, still have impacts on other living creatures on the farm. For example, we spray pyrethrin only at night so that it is not being sprayed while bees are actively foraging from strawberry flowers. It means working after dark, but preserving populations of pollinators is worth it in our book.

Even with organically approved pesticides (yes, that is a thing!), you still have to maintain a balance of beneficial insects, so you can’t just try to kill everything.

We liberate predatory mites, ladybugs and lacewings for biological controls. We interplant onions to repel pests. We occasionally hunt (and eat) rabbits who compete with you for the opportunity to taste a sweet and juicy berry. It’s all part of the circle of life and death, which is reality even on a vegetable farm. Sometimes the facts of agriculture aren’t as idyllic as people want to imagine, but we’d rather share the truth than tell you a lie that will make you feel good.

🍓 What can you do as a farmers market shopper?
1. Buy certified organic strawberries. If organic isn’t available, buy direct from the farmer so you can ask about production practices. Resellers who buy in Plant City typically have no information about how the berries were grown.

2. Ask your farmers market managers to enforce accurate labeling rules so that customers can remain confident in their food choices and want to continue shopping at their market.

3. Ask growers/vendors about where and how they source their food. If you have nothing to hide, you should be proud to tell your food’s story.

Thanks for taking some time to educate yourself about where your food comes from. We hope to see you at the farmers market soon.” Your Frog Song Team

Come ask as all the questions March 16th Spring Festival! Strawberry U-Pick, Live Music, Farm Tours, and More! Or any time during

🍓8:30 am Feb 24 FSO St. Augustine Amphitheater Farmer (St. Augustine Amphitheatre Farmers Market)

🍓8 am Feb 24 FSO at Winter Park Farmer Market (Winter Park Farmers’ Market)

🍓 4 pm Feb 26 FSO at Gainesville Grove Street Farmer Market

🍓8 am Feb 29 Ormond Beach Farmers Market

We have several more Night Trams and Night Hikes available before the season is ending in March! Reserve your spot today!

Night Hikes https://Tuesday020624nh.eventbrite.com
Night Trams https://MNTSWP2024.eventbrite.com

Wondering how many of you have tried products in paperboard push-up containers? Please let me know how they worked? I am interested in changing over from the plastic tubes but everything I read is that they are horrible for many reasons. Please enlighten me. https://www.soapmakermonica.com/product/body-butter/?v=7516fd43adaa

Public service announcement: soap by definition must be called by the ingredient that is the lagest content of the base. So what does that mean? Well if you're making a cookie and the main ingredient is sugar, that is a sugar cookie. So, if you make a Castillo soap it should then contain 80% or more first pressed extra virgin olive oil. If you make a goat's milk soap it should also contain mostly goat's milk. Correct me if I am wrong? Should they not actually be held to labeling standards that the goat milk include the fact that they contaminated the lye solution with goat milk and then added pumice olive oil, copera coconut oil, and of course castor oil because they lack bubbles that really are essential to surrounding containments to clean. Why would you one follow through with something full of fat that does not clean head to toe, but rather a make-do hand soap, actually, IDK about you but when I get milk on my hands, any milk, I am washing. And When I think about how goats behave, omg, nothing about goats says clean. I have seen some pretty unbelievable foul behavior from goats, have you ever watched them? Words cannot say anything positive, other than OMG that's DISGUSTING!!! So when someone sells that Goatsmilk soap and has such nerve to call it Castillo, and Vegan, I am repulsed. Modern Day Snake Oil. It's unscrupulous, to say the least, And those who sell Castillo that is hot processed and say they retain the glycerin and add the h**p. Again, they knew better, Charged the consumer, and did not follow through. That would be Dr. Bronner's soap and Kirks Castillo. So you Know who you are and I am calling you all out for harming those you say you serve. Walk the Talk or Go Home with your HARMFUL Ingredients. God Bless those who are in need and Those who seek the Truth.

Time to cut the logs into bars of Monicas Cococastile Soap

Products are flying out like it’s Christmas time 🙏🦋⭐️ We have the Best Customers and we really want them to feel special!! Have a wonderful weekend everyone 😘

We created a luxurious soap, that exceeds the average bar! Because Ingredients are crucial and we use only four. The very best extra virgin olive oil infused with the very best virgin coconut oil all organic certified by women owned companies! Only the Best goes into Monica's CocoCastile Soap

When the cutter breaks, who ya gonna call? Mike! To the rescue once again! Thank you 🙏

Prairie Creek Soap Works updated their business hours.

High Phenolic Olive Oil - What’s all the Hype? What is high phenolic olive oil, anyway?

The problem with so called natural soaps is all the unnatural components of waste oils!

Turtles sunning! ❤️

Turtles on the Withlacoochee.

We work hard to make Amazing natural moisturizer

Whipped lavender cream and rose shaped lavender soaps 💕🎈🎁🧼 moisturizer is ready soaps will be ready in December. Www.soapmakermonica.com

We're all about that base! And if you want nice skin and hair you should understand what were talkin' about!