meet joan

Although she’s now enjoying her retirement, our founder, Joan, remains the warm spirit behind everything we do. An elementary schoolteacher by trade and a bee lover at heart, Joan started Honey Hill Farm in 1990 in New Carlisle, Ohio. Her story is one of following your curiosity until you find your purpose. Fascinated by bees, Joan became the steward of 30 beehives, resulting in an annual harvest of over 1,000 pounds of honey. Puzzled by what to do with all the sweet stuff, Joan started researching how to make soap.

Using pure spring water from an aquifer that flowed beneath the farm, wildflowers and seasonal botanicals from the meadow nearby, and honey and beeswax from her own hives, Joan began cooking up her signature soap recipe. Our company was born in Joan's kitchen where she lovingly handmade and hand-wrapped every soap herself.

A Note from Joan

Living on Honey Hill Farm, where Joan’s a Keeper was born, was like living in total harmony with nature. Following the blooms of the seasons, we planted a field of bee-friendly wildflowers so that our hives would have plenty of delicious things to eat. We collected milkweed pods and blew the seeds into the meadow so that monarch butterflies would come to visit.

I dried botanicals foraged from the bee meadow—wild violets, comfrey, berries, mint, rosehips and more—and used them in my soap. I even used goat’s milk from Delight, a little goat who lived just down the road.

For us, everything comes back to the earth and we try to keep our products as close to nature as possible so that they exist harmoniously with our bodies and the planet. I hope you enjoy our products as a reflection of the pure goodness that a place like Honey Hill Farm has to offer.

With sweetness,