In this episode, G-Rex and Dirty Skittles chat with Zachary Van Kuren, founder of Milagro Goat Farm. Zach shares his journey from his New Mexico roots to starting a natural skincare business with his family. He discusses the challenges faced during the pandemic, the birth of his premature son, and how resilience and faith helped him navigate tough times. This episode highlights the importance of mental health and the value of clean, natural products.
Find Out More About Zach:- Website: Milagro Goat Farm
- Instagram: @milagrogoatfarm
- Pinterest: Milagro Goat Farm
- Facebook: Milagro Goat Farm
Heather Grace Skincare sponsors this episode. Use the code STGOIOH for a 10% discount at Heather Grace Skincare.
Call to Action:If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health issues, reach out to the 988 crisis hotline. It's OK not to be OK—make sure you're talking to someone.
Connect with G-Rex and Dirty Skittles: Participate & Support: Engagement & Advertising Opportunities: Acknowledgments:Audio Editing by NJz Audio.
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Music.
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Three, two, one. Welcome back to another episode of Shit That Goes On In Our
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Heads. Today, we have an amazing guest, Zach.
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Welcome, Zach, and my amazing co-host, Dirty Skittles. Hey, welcome, Zach.
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Thank you again. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
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How's your day? It just started. Just got done eating some breakfast with the wife and my son.
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So take this time to do this. And yeah, no, it just started. So I'm happy.
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It's a great, beautiful Saturday morning here.
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It's starting to get quite warm, which I don't know. I'm actually one of the
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opposite of folks with that.
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I like the cold, but I like the summer out, the green and stuff that comes with
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it. I don't like the heat. I really don't like it. What was for breakfast?
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Pancakes, egg, and bacon. Do you put anything in your pancakes,
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like chocolate chips or blueberries?
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No, but what I've done since I was a kid, that's a good question.
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That my dad's done and it's kind of always stuck with me and it kind of gave
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me that extra protein and a little more kick that I needed to kind of hold me
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up was I actually put peanut butter on my pancakes.
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Oh, so no syrup? With syrup. Yeah. Oh, fancy.
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I need to try that with my six-year-old. He's a big, just plain pancake,
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unless we have blueberries.
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Then he wants the blueberries. But he does honey. He does not like syrup.
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Yeah, I've never had it with honey, but I love honey so I would imagine I would peanut butter and honey,
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yeah he loves peanut butter I'll do it tomorrow see how it goes we'll report
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that there you go let me know how it goes yeah.
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So tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, yeah.
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Again, my name is Zachary Van Curen, 34 years old, married to my wife, Stephanie.
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We're going to be married now for eight years in October. I have a soon-to-be three-year-old.
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He'll be three and two weeks from now, June 1st.
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And I'm expecting another baby boy. And he should be here either last week of
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June or first week of July.
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They're saying he'll come out July 4th, but we'll see what happens with that.
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I know that's yeah, that'd be awesome.
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It's actually one of my favorite holidays. So we'll see how that goes.
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But yeah, that's kind of me and my family life in a nutshell.
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I live in Los Lunas, New Mexico right now,
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but I'm presumably known to my back history comes from Northern New Mexico in
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Rio Arriba County and Santa Fe as well County.
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So I'm from up north of New Mexico right now.
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I'm kind of like more central New Mexico, but that's where I'm from is a little town called Truchas.
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It's up in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
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It's the beginning of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, which I want to say,
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if I know my history correct, I'll put myself on the spot.
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I think it runs all the way through Colorado or maybe even all the way to Wyoming.
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It's the beginning of the Rockies more or less. So I was very blessed to grow
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up in the little village I grew up in.
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It has a lot of rich history and culture. And a lot of my ancestors are from there.
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And also my early childhood, I was raised in Española, New Mexico,
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which is about 40 minutes west of the little village of Truchas,
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where I grew up most of my teenage life and young adult life.
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Very cool. What's your, I have a very random off the wall. What's your favorite childhood memory?
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Oh, there's many of them. Let me see. Let me pick one out here.
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My favorite childhood memories would have to be right. Like what made my business,
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to be honest, kind of like what I'm doing now is just spending out the time
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outdoors with my family, you know, going out fishing with my brother, my friends.
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We would just go out because we were straight up on the mountain.
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So we would just go up on summer days when school wasn't happening, of course.
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And it's really nice because we'd have quads so we would just go on the quads
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and four-wheelers and head up to the to the creeks and to the springs and things
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like that we'd go fish for the afternoons and then,
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sometimes it would rain on us but i mean we're young didn't matter you know
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we're out in nature in the wild so i would say that was probably my favorite
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memories as a kid and then of course just being with my mom and my dad and my
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brother when i was a kid at playing sports i played many sports
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growing up and doing that kind of stuff.
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And my dad coached me with a lot of the sports I did when I was a young kid.
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And just really being a typical millennial, I like to say before the internet
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came, we were outdoors a lot and playing games and staying out at night until
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like the light, you couldn't see anymore.
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Right. Yeah. Great lights come on.
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That's how I grew up. like we would go
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out in the very beginning of the day and not come home until mom
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was calling us and by that time we were like five blocks
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away on our bikes we hear a faint noise
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i think it's time to go home i remember us playing hide and go seek in the dark
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outside absolutely that's the best yeah look forward to as soon as it started
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to get later on in the day yeah exactly so what do you do now tell our listeners
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what you do now oh i've done many things my young youth of 34 years,
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I've done a lot of different things, but what I currently do right now is I run my own business.
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It's actually with, again, I'm very family-oriented, all you see already.
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I'm going to bring a little bit more in to keep discussing.
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My dad started raising Nubian goats on his land in 2007.
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Mom's a true homesteader, so she's going along with that breakfast again, going with the syrups.
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I was actually really lucky and blessed because my mom would always make homemade
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jams and syrups out of the fruits that were around the region.
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But going back to it kind of leads up to what I'm getting to is my dad started reading back then.
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And then in 2020, of course, we all know what that year brought.
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So my mom was kind of like just doing her thing.
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She was having a hobby and she was like, I'm going to make some goat milk soap.
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So she started making goat milk soap. And I was working for a French cookware
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company at the time. I had just got done graduating college with a bachelor's
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of science and exercise science degree.
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So I was pivoting with two jobs. I was a part-time trying to launch my new business.
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I was a personal trainer slash sports performance trainer.
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So I'd train a lot of athletes, things like that. Because in my past,
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I was a football coach in high school and I really liked that stuff.
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I loved motivating kids and teaching the youth.
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And that's what I thought for sure I'd be doing,
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but things change and maybe in the future but that's what
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I started doing back in early 2010s and
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then when 2020 came like I
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said I was trying to launch my business I was trying to
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get that off the ground but it was like the worst time because
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again people weren't doing anything they were locked down they weren't exercising
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I couldn't train people so that kind of fell through and that was a big struggle
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for me because I went to school and I was very passionate and like I I knew
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that was really what I wanted to do, but God had other plans,
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you know, and his plans are always the best.
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So my mom calls me one day and the French cookware store was actually shut down from the COVID.
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And we were just doing backdoor deliveries and online orders at the time.
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So like nobody was entering the store.
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And I remember it was a quiet moment. I was just sitting in the back room and
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I like to call it my light bulb moment because when we were in lockdown,
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I was watching a lot of Shark Tank.
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And I really wanted to have a business. I really wanted to be an entrepreneur.
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I always felt inspired to do that. And they would always consistently say like,
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hey, you need to have a need, not a want. You need to have something essential.
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And so I never... I was like, well, I would always really overthink about it.
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And like, well, toilet paper is out of the question.
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But my mom calls me and says, I made goat milk soap.
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I didn't think much about it. And then a few weeks later, again,
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I was in the back room by myself.
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And then I had my light bulb moment where I was like, wait a minute,
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we're in a pandemic right now, right?
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Like, what are people buying more than ever? So what are they like getting more
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than ever? Toilet paper, soap, and hand sanitizer.
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And so I just went crazy after that.
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I made up my mind because the store I was working for, we actually found out probably about.
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A week after that, that we were actually going to be shutting down that location.
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So I was going to be out of a job coming that October.
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So we had like five months to sell off what we had in the store.
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So I was like, just in those five months, I was like making a lot of soap with
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my mom and trying to get the recipe correct and what we wanted in the soap.
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But also what I did learn was that a lot of the soap we use is just not good.
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Like it's really bad for us. It it has a lot of harmful chemicals in there,
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a bunch of stuff like PTL-8s, you know, parabens, nitrates, things like that,
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and things that are actually hurting our immune system.
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So when I had my moment, I was like, I looked into researching soap a lot,
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but I researched that soap was cleaning folks and it was antibacterial,
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but it was doing a lot more damage to like our skin and our skin's the largest organ of the body.
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I mean, so, you know, I was like, Like, well, why are we like hurting our immune
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systems and our immune systems are getting weakened and then we have this pandemic happening right now.
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So like, why don't we make a soap that does the opposite of that?
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Like, why don't we make a soap that, you know, cleans, of course, it's soap.
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And then of course, like, let's do some other stuff, like good things for our skin.
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Maybe we have oily skin. Well, then we use activated charcoal to kind of draw
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out some of the toxins in the skin. Maybe we have rosacea or eczema.
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A lot of people suffer from those things.
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So I came to find out that goat's milk is actually allergenic.
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So it's great for sensitive skin and dry skin.
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And it doesn't have any counteractants to it. So it's really gentle on the skin.
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And then I used essential oils.
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So plants that are derived from our earth because we come from the earth.
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So it's real big on me. So using what God gave us and being simple with the ingredients.
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So kind of giving you an idea of my product. But yeah, that's what I do now.
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I run that business. We're called Milagro Goat Farm.
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My dad still takes care of the goats and he milks them and he's the vet and all that stuff.
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And he's got a hard job in itself. And then my mom's my number one soap maker.
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That's primarily what she does for me. Or if I ask her for some other things,
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she'll do that. So I'm very blessed.
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I have great parents that see the dream and want to be a part of it and help me achieve it.
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And then I'll do things like events.
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I'll do promotion, advertisement, marketing, social media.
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I wear many hats, but I don't mean to keep rambling on, but that's kind of like
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in a nutshell, more or less of what I do now.
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I have to tell you, Zach, I love your soap. Because I have very sensitive skin.
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And so whenever I take a shower, that's the only soap I use.
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Thank you. I have to tell you, because you said something and I literally was like, Like, oh, okay.
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My mom's name is Milagros. So when you said Milagro, I was like, oh my God.
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I've never... Anyways, the reason why that's so cool to me, I feel like this is like a sign, right?
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Is I have a passion project that I haven't started because I get into my mind
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of like, I analyzed way too much before doing it, right? Sure.
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But in talking with my mom the other day, I was thinking her and I were kind
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of joking, like we should do this together.
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And so when you said Milagro was the name of the soap, I was like,
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oh my gosh, it's a sign anyways.
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Besides that, let me get into the good question. No worries.
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I'm really curious. Okay. How did your mom take your...
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How did she take it? Because you went from working in a store to then like,
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hey, let's do this thing that I'm assuming was just like a hobby for her.
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Was she making soap on her own just to kind of do it? And then it becomes a business. Sure. Yeah.
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So like I said, she's a homesteader. So like she has hobbies.
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She knows how to do a lot of different things.
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But a lot of things come natural to her because of our ancestors,
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like my great grandmother up here in New Mexico, we have a rich culture here.
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And a lot of people get it twisted, but like she was called a curandera.
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So she was, you know, a healer. A lot of people kind of get that twisted and
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say like, oh, she was a witch.
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Well, no, she just was an herbalist. She was a, she had an apothecary.
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So my mom has that inside of her genes and I carry that on too.
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So my mom noticed she was really good at it really fast.
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And then the same for myself so she was
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doing it just as a hobby and then i had told her my idea and
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i love my mom so much because she supports me a lot
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my dad does as well but my mom really understood
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and like it clicked for her like naturally so she was like this is brilliant
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like we have to do it so like right now for instance this last week like she
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made a lot of soap you know that's what she does like i said so she loves doing
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it it's very therapeutic for her she doesn't mind doing it at all.
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So it wasn't really that difficult with my mom to get her on the train to do
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it. You know, she always saw the vision and she continues to see the vision
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because of all the blessings we've had from it.
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So, yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but that's pretty much that.
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Yeah, I would imagine it would probably be fun to do this thing with your mom, right?
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Like it was something that you said that you were always kind of interested
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in starting your own business and what better person to do it with than somebody
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you trust and love. So I think that's really cool.
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I'm also jealous. You have a soap. I want to get this. I'm getting this soap.
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Oh, you have to. I'll get you some. Awesome. No, you don't even have to.
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I'm on it. I'm already looking up, don't you?
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They're all awesome. And they all make your skin feel really good.
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Which kind of leads into another question. How did you dive into learning about it?
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Was it just natural like growing up, you kind of already knew like treating your skin better?
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Or did you actually have to stop and apply yourself? No, I had to stop and apply myself.
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A lot of my childhood, half of my childhood, I was homeschooled.
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So I've always liked learning.
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I've been always enjoyed educating myself.
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So, you know, I love I really do. I love learning.
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I try to learn something new every day. I am all about growth mindset. set.
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So when I had made my mind up, and I like to think that this a lot of my dad
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instilled in myself and then my ancestry with my dad's side,
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but being in sports really taught me to like have a lot of confidence and believe in yourself.
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It was that competitive edge. So not necessarily being competitive against others,
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but being a competitive against myself and realizing like, hey,
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I need to be better every day.
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So like, with the learning of soap, it's all chemistry.
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It's a lot of chemistry. And I've never even took a chemistry class.
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So like showing people like things are, you can do things, you can self teach
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yourself, you know, I mean, you just have to apply and keep doing it in practice.
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So what I did with that was, I actually ended up buying a product similar to
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ours, but it wasn't goat milk.
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It's a really manly, I don't know if I can give that off or not,
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but I'll try to not because of copyright issues or things like that.
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But it's a manly bar of soap that is natural.
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And it's kind of goes around with like the man, Bigfoot. I'm sure you've heard of him, but it's not.
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And so it was a good soap. You know, I'm not going to lie. Like it was really
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different. And I loved that. I read everything about their website.
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Like I read everything that was in their credence, like everything.
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I did so much research on this business and I took their bars and I tried it
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myself and they were really nice and not to like bring them down or anything
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because everybody's different.
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But what I noticed with them was like that soap, I was paying like 10 bucks
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and then shipping and then like it would just like go through my,
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I mean, it would melt in so fast, like in a week. I was only using in a week.
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So I was like, well, I want to soap that last longer than that.
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I'm sure most people would like a soap that lasts longer than that.
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And then also what they do different is that most of their soap,
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they have some goat milk soap, but most of their soaps have water in it,
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which most soaps carry water with a bunch of other stuff.
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But it's water soluble, so it
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makes sense, right? Like you put it under water, it'll melt fairly fast.
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So with ours, since we use goat milk as our base oil, we don't use water in our soap.
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So it's fat soluble, so it's more dense than water.
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So, I mean, it just melts a lot slower. So that's kind of what I learned with
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that was like learning how to make soap. What are the processes called?
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What are the correct terms like saponification, things like that,
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which is pretty much soap turning into soap with the chemical sodium hydroxide,
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which is there's no longer any of that left once you have soap because that's the byproduct.
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I like to tell folks like when you bake a cake, you use raw eggs.
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So when you have a cake baked, is there raw egg left?
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Now you have the byproduct, which is cake. So it's the same thing for soap.
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And then just learning again, getting more hands on with my mom,
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you know, like I read a lot of stuff, but it was getting hands on and actually
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putting skin in the game and doing it over and over.
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I remember we would do, we would only do like maybe a dozen bars at a time.
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But I remember at that time we were doing like three, four batches in one day
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because we were just like so driven and we were just so excited.
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It and we were like this is so great let's just
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keep doing it and it was funny because my mom
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was using like very small like four ounce
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bottles of essential oils at the time and they would
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go so fast so i mean we've upgraded since then but that's what we did yeah that's
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cool do you have siblings i have one younger brother i was gonna say i'm like
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i would totally i have an older brother but i would totally joke with him at
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that point like a mom's favorite i spent all this time I'm a mom. I'm her favorite now.
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Nice. Really nice. So like when all this was going down during COVID,
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like how was your mental health?
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Because a lot of shit was going on during that time, right?
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You're trying to start a new business. You're finding out that you're going to lose your job.
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And now you're everybody's stuck in home. And I just want to know,
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like, how did you keep from like losing your mind every day?
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I kind of knew that it wasn't going to be a forever thing. So I like to watch
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and like I said, I educate and I analyze everything.
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I'm an empath. So like I can feel a lot of things and sense a lot of stuff.
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And then I take it for what I'm getting. And that was really what I did.
00:20:01
And then what I did too was back then I was actually, I was exercising a lot
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because I mean, that's what kind of was my outlet.
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Like I'd go for runs, you know, lift weights.
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Like I would just keep myself busy and I hadn't have time to really think about like.
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Man, what's going to happen? The only thing that was stressful during that time,
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which is pretty intense, and I'm going to get to that now, is during October
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of 2020, that was when I lost that job.
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We closed, but I was also making soap.
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My plan was like, okay, I'm going to launch this business in 21.
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But that did not happen because my wife and I found out we were expecting,
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which was great, which is our first son.
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We're excited. and we conceived in October, but then in December,
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my wife and I both got COVID pretty bad.
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And what Gary with that is we would further to come on 2021 is with our son
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is since my wife got COVID in her first trimester, and it's happened to a lot of different women.
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So we sympathize with them is that it impacts the placenta growth.
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So since she got COVID, his the
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placenta never fully developed it stayed
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at a pretty small size like equivalent to like a
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small water ball a balloon and so 2020 we're like doing good everything's fine
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and then at the end of 2020 our lease was up and we were living in an amazing
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little casita outside of santa fe like out in the wilderness like i'd see roadrunners
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and wildlife out where i live because i was used to living rural.
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Like that's just kind of who I am, you know? So that comes a long ways when
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you don't have a lot of distractions.
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So it was good for my mental health, but.
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2021 was probably one of the hardest years I've ever actually had.
00:21:55
So kind of going along with what you're asking is it wasn't until 2021 is where
00:22:01
I went through, me and my wife went through some difficulties because our lease
00:22:04
was up and we knew that we were having a kid and the little house we were living
00:22:08
in was like only 915 square feet.
00:22:10
So we're like, well, we got to actually buy a house. And the housing market
00:22:13
thankfully was good at that time.
00:22:16
But what was frustrating was every time we'd find a house, like it was snatched like quickly.
00:22:21
So it was, it was just really hard because we were like, well,
00:22:25
we had to move to Albuquerque and live in a trailer in a single wide trailer in a really rough area.
00:22:31
And it was pretty brutal. And my wife and I were really doubting a lot of stuff.
00:22:35
Like, how could we have left?
00:22:37
How could we were in this peaceful place? Like, this isn't our home.
00:22:40
Like, how long are we going to have to wait?
00:22:42
Granted, like it was only like four months, but it was like the longest four
00:22:46
months of our lives because we were expecting, my wife was getting closer to giving birth.
00:22:51
I mean, by, I think it was, yeah, April is when we moved from Albuquerque and
00:22:55
we found our house in Alasalunas.
00:22:57
So I'm getting to the hard part, which was already kind of difficult for us,
00:23:01
but we went for a normal, not sonogram, ultrasound.
00:23:05
Yeah. And we went one day on a normal ultrasound, everything was checking fine.
00:23:08
And then all of a sudden it was May 30.
00:23:12
No, June 1st. Sorry. June 1st, 2021. We go for an ultrasound.
00:23:17
Thankfully, we just got our house, but we haven't fully unpacked.
00:23:21
We get there to the hospital and they're like, yeah, your son's heart rate is de-statting.
00:23:27
So he's not getting enough oxygen
00:23:31
and he's having to work pretty hard with his, so we were like, what?
00:23:36
Okay, so they're like, well, I'm going to let you know there's a good chance
00:23:40
he might be coming out today.
00:23:42
So that was like, what? He wasn't due till July 16th. This was June 1st.
00:23:49
So a month and a half, like six, he was born seven weeks early. So he was premature.
00:23:55
So he came out later that night. My wife had to have an emergency C-section
00:23:59
right prior to midnight of June 1st. Long night. Had our son, came out healthy.
00:24:07
Was only three pounds, 13 ounces. Very small.
00:24:10
Poor guy. He had to have a feeding tube. He had to have a oxygen mat.
00:24:15
Oxygen, you know, for a while. even brought him home with that.
00:24:19
And what would be the hardest battle I've ever faced was during that time.
00:24:25
And my son had to be in the NICU for a whole month.
00:24:28
So my wife and I would have to come home every night and we'd stay as long as
00:24:33
we could until we couldn't stay up anymore because we were still working.
00:24:36
I was actually, I had a part-time job at that time. I wasn't doing soap making at all.
00:24:41
I ended up having to get a part-time job, which was contact tracing through
00:24:46
the state. And I was able to do that remotely, thankfully, because it was a bad position we were in.
00:24:52
But we would have to go home without our son for a month.
00:24:56
So anybody that's had a kid in the NICU and you can't take your son or your
00:25:01
daughter home, I can tell you already, that is like the hardest pain ever.
00:25:06
So, yeah, that was really tough.
00:25:09
And then seeing the way he was, having been hooked up and having the feeding
00:25:14
tube and stuff like that was hard. And then get this was even harder is when
00:25:18
you need your family and you need friends and support more, guess what?
00:25:21
They can't go in the hospital.
00:25:23
So yeah, you're stuck.
00:25:26
You're alone. You know, that was definitely that's kind of going off of the
00:25:30
question. But like 2020 wasn't so hard.
00:25:35
2021 was the hard year was when I started in doing a lot of that stuff.
00:25:40
What helped you through that? I had been through a lot growing up,
00:25:43
you know, in prior years of my younger adult life.
00:25:47
And just remembering how far I've had already come, you know,
00:25:50
just constantly reminding myself of how far I came from back of my younger days
00:25:56
and how hard those days were.
00:25:59
And just reminding myself like it could always be worse and telling myself it
00:26:03
can always be worse. I'm still blessed.
00:26:06
My son's okay. He's alive. My wife's okay. okay, she's alive. I'm alive.
00:26:11
You know, my family's healthy. Just reminding myself of like the good stuff,
00:26:16
the blessings really is what helped me.
00:26:18
And then prayer. I'm real spiritual with that and just pray a lot of prayer
00:26:23
just to help me and to give me the strength that I needed and not just the strength
00:26:28
for myself, but to be able to be a good husband, supportive,
00:26:32
to be a strong husband for my wife.
00:26:34
Cause I mean, a dad only knows so much.
00:26:37
I could only imagine Imagine being a mom and like you're carrying this person
00:26:42
and not being able to take them like I couldn't even imagine.
00:26:45
So that's what mainly what I held on to is just going back on how far I came and then just prayer.
00:26:52
Did the hospital have like any social workers or anybody you guys could talk to?
00:26:57
Because like you said, there was some height of COVID and like nothing was available to anybody.
00:27:04
Yeah, that's a great question. And there were social workers, but guess what?
00:27:08
Like we never got one, which was weird and odd, but it was kind of like a period
00:27:13
where, I mean, I'm starting to kind of realize a lot of stuff,
00:27:16
like the older I get and like during the times of hard times,
00:27:20
you're always like questioning everything. Like, why is this happening to me?
00:27:23
You know, or why is this happening to us?
00:27:26
But I felt like it had to be that way for a reason.
00:27:29
You know, I mean, we didn't get one, which is, it would have helped.
00:27:33
I'm saying it wouldn't have helped but it would
00:27:36
have but I feel like
00:27:39
right now looking back on it that we just
00:27:42
had to be alone you know like we had to be alone
00:27:45
with me my wife and our son to learn
00:27:47
to like be strong for each other and to know that it's just sometimes it might
00:27:52
just be you three it might just be you know and just learning that without having
00:27:57
any outside help which it's hard But sometimes what I've learned about life
00:28:03
and pain is sometimes pain is essential.
00:28:05
Pain is good for us as much as it might not be at all times.
00:28:09
But sometimes it is, you know, and it makes us better, makes us grow.
00:28:13
And I kind of felt like that was really why we had to go through being alone during that time.
00:28:20
And maybe not so much why you had to do it, or I feel like if anything,
00:28:25
it taught you that you already could do it and that you were already strong enough.
00:28:30
I don't think, you know, that you had to do it, right?
00:28:34
Like you, you just could, you know, you're finding that faith and that in yourself already.
00:28:40
And that's pretty cool. Thank you. Yeah, no, I agree.
00:28:44
Well, what I mean, I immediately go to the new parent questions.
00:28:48
Like you, I think as a new parent right like you're already like
00:28:51
stressed out that that moment where you could
00:28:54
bring your child home I feel like
00:28:57
you it was probably amplified right because it's during COVID you
00:29:00
haven't been able to bring them home for so long and now finally
00:29:03
that day hits did you still freak out
00:29:06
like a new parent would like holy shit we can
00:29:09
do this they're trusting us to do this are they sure they gave
00:29:12
me a little human now I need to take care of it yeah how
00:29:15
was that so you've proven you're strong enough you can
00:29:18
do it together and now that payoff
00:29:22
happens you bring your baby home yeah oh it's a great question so it was actually
00:29:27
bittersweet and not to say it wasn't good or not good of course it was relief
00:29:32
because it was like yes let's just go home let's go home right you know and
00:29:36
we did do that but again that was like another trial that we had
00:29:41
to figure out now was because it was like, oh, well, he's underweight severely.
00:29:46
So like he's got to eat. And anybody that's had a premature kid,
00:29:51
it depends how far they are. But he was pretty far. Again, he was only three pounds.
00:29:55
So like normally a normal size baby, you feed them when they wake up. Right. With our son.
00:30:03
That wasn't the case. It was like you had to wake up every two hours to feed
00:30:07
him and you had to do it on the clock.
00:30:09
So in a span of one night, my wife and I had probably been awake like three
00:30:16
times each feeding our son. And granted, he's little.
00:30:19
So, I mean, like he's not going to be eating quickly. You know,
00:30:22
I mean, like it would take him to drink like I think it was like two ounces
00:30:26
of milk and it would take him like almost an hour to drink.
00:30:29
Yeah. So, I mean, like, I'm just nodding, falling asleep while I'm feeding him,
00:30:34
holding him and my wife the same.
00:30:37
And that was a whole other struggle, too, because we just didn't have I was
00:30:41
like way on the negative of sleep and then working in the morning or during the day.
00:30:46
So, yeah, it was good. But then figuring out, like, stuff like that, being a new parent,
00:30:51
of course, you know, I remember when we got home, like, right away,
00:30:55
like, the first, like, minutes we got home, we put him on the kitchen table
00:30:59
with his, like, and we were cleaning him.
00:31:02
And my wife was there, thankfully, but I, like, walked away,
00:31:06
straight up, just walked away. She's like, babe, you can't walk away. It rolls over and falls.
00:31:10
And I'm like, oh, that's actually when I was like, oh, whoa,
00:31:14
okay. okay, like, yeah, this is real. It's that new parent realization.
00:31:19
You're like, oh, this is a life now. Like, literally, right?
00:31:23
Like, keep them alive. That's all you.
00:31:27
It's true. It's true. This is not the doll we've been playing with. This is real life.
00:31:33
Yeah, it's just like that moment where it all comes together and like everything
00:31:37
makes sense again. And you're like, oh, shit.
00:31:40
Yeah, literally. Yeah, it's true. I mean, it just comes in. I remember from that moment.
00:31:46
Yeah. Like I said, it hit me and it was like, I'm there, you know,
00:31:50
I am a parent, you know, I am a dad.
00:31:53
So it's time to get going. And it's been great since, you know,
00:31:57
there's been a hard time with that, but I wouldn't change anything.
00:32:00
I wouldn't have my son, you know, so it makes me a better person,
00:32:04
you know, and I could never imagine my life without my son. And I've always
00:32:09
asked, like, how could I have grown up without this person in my life?
00:32:12
You know, it's pretty awesome. Yeah.
00:32:15
Yeah. I think there's beauty in that, like...
00:32:18
When we go through something so difficult, it's almost like you're learning
00:32:22
just how strong you are and then more happens.
00:32:25
And you're like, fuck, I just learned how strong I was because of this experience.
00:32:30
But now I have to get through something harder.
00:32:32
And you continue to push through and you continue to push through.
00:32:35
And there's just beauty in finding a moment of peace and looking back at how far you've come.
00:32:41
Because you continue to do that throughout life. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
00:32:45
I remember kind of distinctly that I was laying in our room and we were just
00:32:49
like kind of relaxing, watching TV.
00:32:52
And this was probably about three months after he had been born.
00:32:57
So one month he was in the NICU and then the next two we were doing getting
00:33:01
up every night for like two months and every hour of the night.
00:33:05
And we finally got to the point where he was like averaging
00:33:09
out what he could be and i remember
00:33:12
like laying there and just saying like i think we'd
00:33:15
made it i think we're i think we're through this storm like
00:33:18
thank god i think we're through it but part of
00:33:21
you like part of you like i don't know if it's doubt but like
00:33:24
part of you is like yeah but what if something and
00:33:27
i hate to say that but sometimes you're like is something else gonna
00:33:29
come like is something you know will the shoot drop yeah
00:33:32
absolutely yeah so but no
00:33:35
well no luckily it was smooth
00:33:38
it was it's been good and yeah and you're
00:33:41
what between you and your wife like i'm sure you
00:33:44
both had like mental struggles like when you were going through that did you
00:33:48
guys help each other to heal and you know try and just make it through another
00:33:53
day because i know what it's like to be sleep deprived and you know having to
00:33:57
care for now i don't know what it's like to care for another child because i
00:34:01
don't have children i I have eight cats instead,
00:34:02
but I, I, but I can only imagine like the,
00:34:06
the struggles that you, your internal struggles within just like expressing
00:34:11
that to each other and just making sure that you could make it to like the next
00:34:15
hour, the next day, the next week without like.
00:34:18
Completely losing hope so i'm happy
00:34:21
that your son's gonna make it to three in just a couple weeks
00:34:24
so thank you yeah i would say
00:34:27
during that time like if it was physically like a physical problem like again
00:34:33
being tired sometimes we would do another feeding so be like hey you know what
00:34:38
i got this one just go back to sleep and then we would just kind of take turns
00:34:43
with that as a emotional standpoint,
00:34:46
it was communicating and talking to each other.
00:34:48
Me and my wife are really good at that. Thankfully, as we communicate pretty
00:34:53
well and tell each other how we're feeling,
00:34:56
if we're not telling each other how we're feeling, we can always understand
00:34:59
like, oh, they're stressed or, you know, we can just read off of each other
00:35:03
because we've been together for a while now.
00:35:05
But communication, that's always the number one is communicate and tell each
00:35:10
other how you're feeling.
00:35:11
Like if you're even just saying, you know what, I feel defeated.
00:35:13
I don't feel good. I don't have any confidence right now.
00:35:17
And just expressing those feelings just helps in itself to get out.
00:35:21
But like my wife is great.
00:35:24
You know, she, like I said, she listened to me and helped me and I did the same thing back for her.
00:35:29
So was it always, you know, peaches and cream? No. I mean, we're human.
00:35:34
So there were times that like, you know, we would
00:35:37
get frustrated at each other frustrated at the problem and
00:35:40
you know maybe have a little bit of a bickering moment or
00:35:43
something like that but not too bad it was more
00:35:46
of like again we had just went through something really hard together
00:35:49
so it was like we knew that like none of us had it easy so especially her i
00:35:55
mean like she's the one that had to have you know the c-section stuff so i mean
00:35:58
like i mean i went through the ride and had a hard time but not like the mom
00:36:04
you know so i knew that part of me was like, again,
00:36:08
this is like how I was raised, you know, I was kind of raised old school in that sense.
00:36:12
And it's not a bad thing either. It was more of like, I got to be the man and
00:36:16
I got to be a husband and like, you know, my feelings matter.
00:36:19
But at the end of the day, like, I want my wife to be okay.
00:36:24
Because if my wife, it's just like the truth saying, like, if she's happy,
00:36:28
you know, you're going to be happy. And it's true.
00:36:30
I mean, I can't take that any other way. Like if my my wife's happy, then I'm happy.
00:36:35
And I really genuinely mean that because that means that we're doing something right.
00:36:39
Yeah, that is like maturity, right?
00:36:42
Like that is realizing you love and respect this person that you've chosen to
00:36:47
spend the rest of your life with.
00:36:49
And when you understand what that means and you're mature enough to fill those
00:36:53
shoes, you step up and you do things to help each other.
00:36:58
And I think that's a healthy relationship is what it sounds like. Yeah, definitely.
00:37:02
Yeah, thank you. It is.
00:37:05
Well, where can our listeners find more about you and your soap and your company?
00:37:10
Do you ship also to Georgia?
00:37:14
Yeah, no. Good question. So first and foremost, if you just want to email me,
00:37:19
we have email at Milagro, M-I-L-A-G-R-O, Goat Farm.
00:37:26
And then at gmail.com.
00:37:28
And then so if like you just want to shoot us an email, that's where you can
00:37:32
do that. If you want to kind of see some pictures and see some things of what
00:37:35
we do, social media is a good way to go.
00:37:38
Our number one platform at the time is Instagram. So just Milagro Goat Farm
00:37:43
again. You can find us there.
00:37:44
You'll see my mom, my dad, my brother, my wife, my son, me, goats,
00:37:50
how you make soap, me making soap, like you name it.
00:37:54
I do some pretty funny skits once in a while, too, just to kind of lighten it
00:37:58
up, put myself out there.
00:38:00
And then of course like facebook a little
00:38:04
bit of pinterest i just started our youtube channel i
00:38:06
have a lot of youtube short but i have like two episodes or three episodes on
00:38:12
youtube so trying to get that going so if you want to know a little bit more
00:38:16
what we do and why we do it that's a good place to go because it kind of gives
00:38:19
you a short description and me speaking of why we do it and why we created it.
00:38:24
So, and then also, lastly, if you want to buy some soap, you can go to milagrogoatfarm.org
00:38:31
and it'll show you all our soaps.
00:38:33
And we just had a release yesterday, which is our spring summer soap.
00:38:37
It's an awesome soap. It's called Meteorite. So if you want to blast away grime
00:38:42
and you want to get rid of like the blackheads, the oily skin,
00:38:44
that's soap that you'll definitely need. And it's a good one. It's very unique.
00:38:49
Very cool. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you, Zach.
00:38:53
For having me. What a great conversation. Thank you so much.
00:38:57
And I'm super excited. I know you're excited to be new daddy number two soon.
00:39:03
Oh, yeah. Very excited. Nervous, but excited.
00:39:07
I know it's going to be a life changer again.
00:39:11
So, hey, that's what life's about, right?
00:39:14
And just keep going and just you're not doing it.
00:39:17
You're not living right. so I'm really happy for you
00:39:20
guys I want to share you know like what I've seen
00:39:23
all the growth that you guys have been doing is pretty remarkable it's
00:39:26
not shocking to me it's really not with g-rex I'm
00:39:29
g-rex runs like your social right more of anything everything
00:39:32
she is the queen of it all so
00:39:36
it's not surprising really it's not when
00:39:39
I interviewed back in February and I saw the way you
00:39:42
guys were growing I was like it's just the
00:39:45
beginning so I know you guys are very humble and
00:39:48
where you are but i'm gonna let you know already like you better
00:39:51
buckle up because no shit yeah you
00:39:55
guys are headed there you are really are headed there but it's because it's
00:40:00
what you were meant to do so thank you whenever you have those doubts just know
00:40:05
it was meant for if you want to come this far to just come this far you know
00:40:09
oh that is right and very yeah absolutely and surreal at the same time.
00:40:15
We were just talking about how crazy all of this is. Yeah.
00:40:24
Sweaty palms again.
00:40:28
Yeah absolutely it has that effect for sure
00:40:31
but you won't know until you put yourself out there oh
00:40:34
it's gonna be you there's gonna be a moment where you're
00:40:37
gonna be booked for probably years to be
00:40:40
honest like you because you guys have been around for what
00:40:43
a year and a half two years now just a year
00:40:47
just a year in february yeah
00:40:51
i see i mean like you have like i mean not and.
00:40:54
I'm not saying this to shoot you down at all and just saying like you guys are
00:40:57
still babies you're barely starting to walk and now
00:41:00
you know all this you know you
00:41:03
got interviews you for you're gonna you're just not gonna
00:41:05
have there's gonna be a time and you're seeing that now already where before
00:41:09
you're like you're having to go and look for people
00:41:12
or go and ask right whereas you're
00:41:16
gonna get so big and you're probably already doing this to where like
00:41:18
you're gonna have them come to you and when
00:41:21
that happens that's huge that is
00:41:24
massive for a small business because it's a small business
00:41:27
you know i mean like the podcast but it's a business in itself
00:41:30
so you're gonna have folks that are just gonna come
00:41:33
to you and when you start having that which
00:41:36
you're already having you know you're doing something right and
00:41:39
you know that you're on the right path when stuff starts when
00:41:42
stuff just opens and really comes and
00:41:46
it's not like against the grain that's when
00:41:49
you know you're doing something right and you know you're
00:41:51
on the right path so i can definitely
00:41:54
see that happening sounds good bye thank you hi y'all thank you so much for
00:42:01
listening to this episode i'm g-rex and i'm dirty skittles don't forget to subscribe
00:42:06
rate and review this podcast we'd love to listen to your feedback we can't do this without you guys.
00:42:17
Music.
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