History of Women at Wind Song Acres

Nadine Making Soap

Wind Song Acres is currently owned and run by women! Wind Song Acres wouldn't have ever come to be if it wasn't for women and wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't for women. Nadine was talking to a friend, Katherine, about her plans for Christmas gifts. Katherine decided that year she was going to make soap for everyone instead of buying gifts. She knew everyone would use it and wouldn't take up space forever in their homes. Nadine heard this and decided to try making soap. A background in science made this a perfect creative outlet for her.

She learned the basics, got supplies and began making soap in her kitchen. She quickly fell in love with this creative and scientific outlet. What started off as curiosity continued to grow into a small business. Once the kitchen was full of soap her husband asked "what are you going to do with it?" Once she gifted all she could the next best answer was to start selling it and that is when she started attending craft shows. Many of the shows are run by women or have women in positions making sure the shows run smoothly (Maple Fest, Letchworth, Greene Applefest, Otselic Heritage Day, Upstate Ren Faire, etc..). Without them taking the time out of their busy year for a single weekend these craft fairs wouldn't be as successful as they are. As the business grew Nadine needed more help. Her son, husband, dad and mother began helping her grow Wind Song Acres. Nadines' mother primarily helped with wrapping the soap. She was so dedicated to wrapping soap if she accidentally fell asleep on the job, she would keep her finger in place to make sure the pattern of the paper stayed perfectly aligned. Once the Craft Fairs started taking off it was time to increase our online presence. Unexpectedly but happily, Sabrina joins the team to help with the website, news letters, blogs and social media. Aiding in the rebrand in 2020 she helped focus on a message: Purposefully Designed, Simply Made. Where we do our best to craft purposeful products out of simple (ethical, sustainable, and local) ingredients. Alaina, a family member with a background in design took our rough vision and ideas for the company rebrand and brought it into focus by helping us with our logo and the patterns on our soap paper. She really helped to elevate our look from the scrap book paper and clip art we were using before. With the rebranded look we also tweaked our recipe and focused in on finding local ingredients. Our local ingredients come from women! Jen at Half Barn Farm provides us with all of our goat milk. The Stout Beer for our Stout Beer Soap comes from Krista, at Hidden Springs Brewhouse. Most of the bees wax we use comes from Kutik's Everything Bees where we work with Lindsey the resident bee expert. With a beautiful product we could feel good about it was time to expand our reach. We developed relationships with other small businesses to wholesale our products.

Almost all of our wholesale accounts are women owned and/or operated. Nearly 25% of American women own a small business equaling around 43% of all small businesses.

Wind Song Acres is where it is today because of the help and inspiration of many women. Thank you to all of the amazing women who have supported us on this journey, directly and indirectly.

Happy Women's History Month!