We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shauna Duncan. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shauna below.

Hi Shauna, thanks for joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Waking up every morning, and sipping coffee on the back porch, we get to watch the sun rise, bringing warming bright yellow and lavender rays across the lochan and through our farm.

It’s a joy watching the sun rise, that special moment just before the dawn rays take us from night to day. This is a twilight, not an evening twilight, a special twilight, a twilight at dawn.

We searched for words to describe this beauty that we experience every morning, and in the descriptive Scottish Gaelic language we found just that.

Camhanaich (pronounced “kav’-an-ach”) meaning ‘Early Morning Twilight”.

How fitting that these morning views lock in our far past heritage, and our future dreams of lavender fields. How fortunate that we can lay claim to such a term.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up pretty much everywhere in Florida. I have lived in cities and in the small towns. My best memories are in the small towns where we had land. There was a freedom that came with not being in the city. I loved getting off the school bus and hiking myself on our horses bareback and taking off for hours. Not a worry in the world. I had more time to appreciate the small things and to learn more useful life skills that made me a stronger person and capable of entertaining myself. I realize that is not how everyone is wired but for me it gave me an idea of what I wanted for my future. Jump forward 20 years later and a lot of hard work, My husband and I decided we wanted our own place where we could begin becoming more sustainable and less dependent on outside conveniences. We found our dream property in Cobbtown Georgia. He wanted accessibility to water and I wanted land for horses. This is how we began our dream on our 16 acres. The property came with a small mixed herd of goats. I had never had goats, but my love for animals made it easy for me to accept the challenge of learning about them. It was very challenging as goats are not as easy as they are said to be. I had to deal with a lot of heart ache and failures through the learning process. Horses are WAY easier to care for.

We had also decided that we wanted to plant a crop to make use of the land, but we wanted something that was unique to our area. Lots of research and a willingness to try resulted in a decision to plant lavender. Like goats, lavender is temperamental, especially in our region where we have heavy clay and high humidity. But the reward if we could do it was appealing and over the next 2 years I went through a heavy learning curve. I changed out my herd to Nubian Dairy Goats (they are the sweetest and most beautiful breed of goats in my opinion) and tried many different cultivars of lavender. I joined the US Lavender Growers Association and the US Dairy Goats Association, attended events, travelled around to farms, and did lots of research toward how to better our operation. The Lavender has been challenging in the 4 years we have been growing. Not many consumers realize that there are dozens of different cultivars of lavender, and all of them have their very own unique scent. I have so many customers stop and ask how we do it and I don’t hold back any secrets, we are still learning and constantly experimenting. What I learned after joined the United States Lavender Growers Association was that all lavender growers have to continue to educate their selves on what will work and what doesn’t on their specific property. What works for one farmer will almost certainly not work for the next. There is no big secret us lavender farmers are keeping we all have just had to figure it out. Be persistent and constantly evolve and keep moving forward. Of course, all of our milk and lavender has a purpose. I wanted to be able to take our product and make a business from it. With having an excess of milk I decided to try my hand at making Goat Milk Soap. My first loaf of soap was far from pretty but it was amazing to use. As I perfected the craft of making goat milk soap, and of course using it every day in our household, I realized this was something special. I wanted to make true farm fresh goat milk soap a staple in households as it was in ours. I only lightly scent our soaps with essential oils. Lavender essential oil is in all of our fragranced products. I realized it was about more than just soap to be able to use what we were producing. When I started to think about the business, we looked at what we would be doing in the future and quickly realized that the business was about goats, their milk, and lavender and lavender products and farm life. This made the business more than a soap business. My branding for Camhanaich Farm has focused on lavender, goats milk, and farm life and the majority of our product range contains at least one of these core ingredients. Along with traditional lavender, I wanted something unique to our business and have experimented and developed a range of fragrances through a combination of essential oils that have become my signature scents. These are unique to Camahanaich Farm along with traditional lavender based products and from my signature range of soaps, body butters, sprays, steamers and bath bombs, along with a range of associated products.

Every day, my heart is full from the love our Nubians show and from the lavender that does thrive and return each year. What I want for our followers to see from our products is not just the products that are amazing and I believe in and pour my heart and soul into, but also the work is put in to cultivate our main ingredients for our products are fresh from our farm. We milk our own milk and we grow our own lavender. I want our customers to know that our animals are loved and our products come from a brand that is trusted.

How’d you think through whether to sell directly on your own site or through a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc.

In January 2021, our website on Shopify went live. After many years of testing our products we felt it was time to begin selling. Covid was still pretty unstable so opening a E-commerce seemed the best thing to do at the time. We choose Shopify because of the website building and because it maintains all of the behind the scenes necessities, like stock counting, taxes, shipping. Also, when we were ready to go to in-person markets it has a wonderful point of sale platform and everything is still directly from the website.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

We have funded our business personally from the beginning. It was a slow process and alot of planning and saving. We did not want to begin this business and then fail because we had alot of debt to payback within 6 months of starting. A lot of businesses fail in the first 6 months because they are not turning a profit, add on a small business loan debt and you are already upside down. From the moment we bought the property we were already visualizing what we wanted to do. My biggest motto is slow and steady wins the race. I am so glad I believe this, the business is constantly evolving even 2 years later. I am constantly learning what is working and what isn’t and planning for next steps. Funding our business this way has reduced financial pressures for short term results and positioned us well for the long hall and given us the ability to make the small adjustment to make us better before our product goes mainstream too quickly.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.camhanaichfarm.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camhanaichfarm/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CamhanaichFarm

Image Credits
All images were take by myself, except the one I am holding my soaps in a white blouse. That image is from www.bybonniephotography.com.