Utah Woman’s Goat Milk Soap Continues To Sell Amid Pandemic

EDEN, Utah — Just outside a tiny town of 600, you’ll find a little slice of paradise — and a woman who’s finding out the products she makes are just as popular as ever, even during a pandemic.

In a place like Eden, you might expect to find a woman living a rural life to be named “Eve,” but instead, she’s named after the goddess of wisdom: Athena Steadman.

“I am not Greek, my dad just really like it,” she said with a laugh.

Athena has a fenced-in enclosure and metal shed near her house. She unlocks the gate, and a small herd of goats come running.

“I’m an animal lover,” she said. “I just saw some friends had some baby goats, and we thought, ‘They’re cute, super cute,’ so we bought a couple of goats.'”

While Athena said the popular belief is goats will eat anything, hers are particularly picky. They swarm around her, jumping up for handfuls of Fritos she pulls from a bag.

Athena said she wanted to buy goats she could milk, instead of what she calls “glorified pasture ornaments.” She didn’t just want to tend to her flock — she wanted them to tend to her.

Like the birth of her namesake, an idea sprung fully grown from her head. Take a quick drive into town, and you’ll find her workshop.

“Goat milk is really good for dry, sensitive skin,” she said.

For years, Athena’s been making soap using goat milk. She said it’s made the “traditional way,” using oils and lye, mixing her concoctions one ingredient at a time in a large metal pot.

Her creations were primarily born out of necessity.

“I have MS,” she said. “My MS is doing really good, and that’s why I actually started making the soap, and I have some sensitivities. I started watching what I was eating to kind of help the MS and my diagnosis, and I realized that was really helping the disease. And with that, I started watching what I was putting on my skin.”

Athena said the goat milk helps lower the pH level of the soap, making it more mild for those with issues like hers.

She now runs her own business called “Simply Eden,” selling goat milk soap and lotions to the locals, as well as shipping around the world.

She said she has become so busy that she now has a handful of employees, and instead of taking the time to milk her own goats, she buys goat milk from others around the area.

But the scent of lavender and citrus isn’t the only thing in the air of Eden — so is change.

Like most every business around, hers was impacted by the coronavirus. Athena had to switch to only selling online and offering local pickup or delivery, even offering to let people call over FaceTime and virtually browse around the store.

The doors are now partially back open, and sales have been steady.

It turns out that during a pandemic, the public decided her products were essential.

“Soap is always the best defense,” Athena said. “Especially right now when people are washing their hands so much.”

She said hand sanitizer is booming far more than her business is — which she doesn’t sell — but at least so far, her soap is still selling. But it isn’t just online sales keeping the soap off the shelves — Athena’s neighbors in this town of 600 are helping keep her business going.

“I’ve been very fortunate, I have really good local support,” she said. “It’s really a community up here.”

She said she couldn’t have forseen a pandemic, but the woman named for the goddess of wisdom didn’t need an oracle to tell her it’s good business to live in a valley where everybody knows your name.

“We are all friends and family, and that’s how it is,” she said.