Building The Remnant: Where We Are Right Now

There is something strange about building something while you are still standing in the middle of it.

Most business stories get told afterward.

You hear about the beginning once the company has grown, the mistakes once they have become lessons, and the difficult years once everyone already knows that things eventually worked out.

This journal is going to be different.

Building the Remnant is being written while The Remnant Homestead is still being built.

Right now, there is no polished ending to tell.

There are products being reformulated and improved. Labels being redesigned. A website being rebuilt piece by piece. Workspaces being changed. New ideas constantly being tested. Some things work immediately. Others absolutely do not.

There are days when everything feels like progress.

And there are days when it feels like I spent twelve hours fixing something that should have taken twenty minutes.

That is part of the story too.

Where We Are Right Now

The Remnant Homestead has grown far beyond simply making a few handmade products.

There are soaps, body care products, deodorants, lotions, candles, aroma products, oils, and other things constantly being developed and refined.

But at the same time, the business itself is still being refined.

The branding is changing.

The website is becoming more intentional.

Packaging is improving.

The workspace is being rebuilt and reorganized.

Products that once felt finished are being revisited because I know they can be better.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, orders still have to be made, packed, shipped, photographed, listed, marketed, and explained.

Sometimes building a business feels less like climbing a staircase and more like building the staircase while you're already standing on it.

Why Document Any of This?

Because I don't want to forget it.

If The Remnant Homestead becomes what I believe it can become, I want there to be a record of what it looked like before everything was polished.

I want to remember the old labels.

The first versions of products.

The workspace before it was finished.

The ideas that failed.

The formulas that changed.

The website pages that were rebuilt three times because something still didn't feel right.

The setbacks that seemed enormous at the time.

The little victories that probably won't seem little when I look back on them later.

There is value in remembering where something started.

This Will Not Be a Highlight Reel

I don't want Building the Remnant to become one of those business journals where every entry sounds like everything is going wonderfully.

Because that wouldn't be true.

There will be mistakes here.

There will probably be products that don't work.

Plans will change.

Things will cost more than expected.

Equipment will break.

Projects will take longer than they should.

There will be ideas that seem brilliant at midnight and considerably less brilliant the next morning.

And there will be seasons where progress feels painfully slow.

But there will also be breakthroughs.

New products.

Better formulas.

Better packaging.

New customers.

Rooms being finished.

Orders going places they have never gone before.

Milestones that once seemed impossible.

And hopefully, years from now, somebody will be able to start at the beginning of this journal and watch all of it happen.

More Than Growth

I don't want to build something large simply for the sake of saying that I built something large.

The purpose behind The Remnant Homestead has always mattered more than that.

The products matter.

Quality matters.

Taking care of customers matters.

Building something that can support my family matters.

But I also want this business to point beyond itself.

If it grows, I want that growth to create more opportunity to serve people, encourage people, help people, and ultimately give glory to God.

That means success cannot only be measured by sales.

It also has to be measured by whether we stayed true to why we started.

So This Is the Starting Point

August 2026.

The business is growing.

The website is changing.

The workspace is still being built.

The products are still being refined.

There is more work than there are hours in the day.

There are things I know how to do now that I had absolutely no idea how to do when this began.

And there is still an enormous amount I have left to learn.

I have no idea what The Remnant Homestead will look like several years from now.

That's exactly why I want to write this now.

Someday I want to come back to this first entry and remember:

This is where we were.

Not finished.

Not perfect.

Not where we wanted to be yet.

But building.

And that is enough for a beginning.