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Happy February! Many of you know, February is Black History Month. This past summer was a highly energized season of racial conflict in our country, and for me and my family, it spurred us to seek out what racial reconciliation means and how we as a white family can contribute to the solution. We have a few family values that define what it means to “be a Watson”. These include things like: We are kind. We show respect. We tell the truth. We love to laugh. We value people over things. So as we faced the decision on what is our role in the pursuit of racial reconciliation, we were drawn to a posture of education and awareness. There’s so much I could share on this blog about this journey, but I want to focus specifically on empowering you and your family to join us and there’s no better time to start than now.

My first challenge to you is to expand “Black History Month” to the entire year, not just the month of February. There’s just too much information to be gleaned about the excellent contributions and accomplishments of black people to squeeze into 28 days. To help you with this, we’ve come up with twelve ideas to expand your knowledge and awareness of black culture. Tackle one per month and you’ll be celebrating BHM all year long!

1. Evening read with the kiddos: “What Color Is my World.”
2. Mask up field trip to a Black Heritage tour near you. Locals, here are some Black Heritage tours in New Albany or visit Muhammed Ali Center.
3. Word Search: Search, circle & educate. Free printables!
4. Picture this: Picture book reading, “Henry’s Freedom Box.” (kid friendly)
5. Movie Night: “The Color of Friendship” (kid friendly)
6. Celebrate and Shop: Support Black owned businesses. 
   “That’s my Dog” and “Funky Waffle.” (Both located in Jeffersonville Indiana.)
7. Documentary for Adults: “More Than A Month.
8. Watch the movie “Hidden Figures”. There are also books of the story too.
9. Printable Coloring Pages: Color and educate
10. Educate through social media: Follow “The Conscious Kid”
11. Tune In: Listen and educate on black musicians.
12. Read through “Honor Black History Month with Truth and Action” article from Be The Bridge

So excited to be learning and growing alongside each other! If you have any other ways you love to celebrate Black History, comment below and let us know.

If you’re new to our elderberry syrup, let us catch you up to speed. We make our syrup fresh every week using a delicious blend of berries, spices and honey. Our customers love our syrup because every ingredient we use serves a purpose that empowers our customers to support their immune systems. We don’t waste time with preservatives or unnecessary additives. In this blog, we want to dive deeper into the spices we put in our syrup and the benefits they give to the health of our customers. 

The three spices we use in our elderberry syrup are ginger root, ceylon cinnamon and cloves. All three spices are well-known to be high in antioxidants and aid in digestive health. As a mom, the digestive health of my kiddos is something that I can overlook until their tummies get upset. Using elderberry syrup has helped keep them regular, especially when we take road trips (do any other parents have kids that have a hard time pooping on vacation?? Just me?). The high antioxidant content of our spice blend is another benefit in our syrup that as a mom gives me some peace, knowing I’m giving my family a strong defense for their bodies to support a healthy immune system. In addition to these benefits, the spice blend we use gives our syrup a great taste that can best be described as “Christmas”. 

For some of our customers and their taste preference, our syrup may be too sweet or too spicy. For that, we have our Elderberry Syrup Kits, which gives you the dry ingredients of our syrup so that you can make a batch on your own stove top. This gives you the freedom to add more or less honey to your batch to match your taste preference! Many of our customers love this option.

Kids can be picky. If your kiddos don’t love the taste of our syrup, our Elderberry Gummies are a GREAT solution. These are the only gummies out there made with our actual Elderberry Syrup. And compared with the other gummy brands, we pack 300mg of Elderberry Immune Strength in each gummy which means your kids only have to take one gummy per day (not 9-10 gummies of the other brands). Also, our gummies are a great on-the-go option if you are in a rush to get your family out the door or if you’re literally on the road :-)

So there you have it! We love giving our customers an inside look into our cozy small business. We truly take care of every detail in our products and believe 100% that our quality is unmatched. If you have any questions, we now have a live chat feature on our website where you can connect directly with us. You can also shoot us an email at info@theelderberryco.com. Thank you for journeying with us as we empower families with a natural & effective way to support their immune systems!

Jenny

If you’ve been online shopping at all this holiday season, chances are you’re probably waiting on a package that has yet to arrive. In fact, you probably just checked your email to see the “status” of that gift you bought on Black Friday thinking “gosh, I should have gotten that by now”. I know I’m still waiting on seven candles I bought back in mid-November from a very well-known candle company! Fingers crossed they arrive before Christmas.

You’ve probably seen news articles about how many major carriers, including the one we use (USPS) are experiencing significant delays and often many packages just being declared as “lost”. As a small business who relies HEAVILY on USPS to complete our customer experience, this month has been tough to say the least. There’s not a ton we can control once that perfectly packed box of elderberry syrup or gummies leaves our hands and begins its journey to our customer. For the most part (about 99.6% to be exact), USPS does FANTASTIC at getting our products into the hands of our customers, but just like most things in 2020, our experience lately has been a struggle: lots of delayed and lost packages, lots of disappointed customers. 

As a small business with real people, we value like crazy every single one of our customers. I was just sitting in a meeting with my Customer Care Team last week and listened to their stories of helping our customers get their orders in a timely fashion. They genuinely care about each customer and don’t just see an order number but a person with a story about how our elderberry products have impacted their family and kept them healthy.

What I am in AWE over is how many of our customers have been patient and gracious with us as we sort out exactly where their package is and why their syrup went to Hawaii before its destination in Ohio (it’s happened). While we can’t control everything USPS does, we can control how we respond, and it is always with kindness and generosity, focused on relationships. We wouldn’t have grown this business without our customers so it is our customers we take care of to the best of our ability. 

So I just wanted to hop on here and tell you, our customer, THANK YOU for your patience and grace. Thank you for trusting us to keep your family healthy. Someday we will learn just where all those lost packages went...I’d like to think they are all just hanging out on the beach with a mojito in their hands (humor me) waiting for this pandemic to be long-gone. Who knows :-)

As always, thank you for supporting our small business!

-Jenny

This summer you may have noticed that we launched an AMAZING line of Infused Raw Honey products! These included Vanilla, Orange, Peach and Coffee. The response we received from you was INCREDIBLE. So many of you shared recipes of how you incorporated these flavors into your favorite treats like tea, smoothies, baked goods and more! 

Well now it's time to launch our next infused honey flavor: Cinnamon Infused Raw Honey! And let me tell you, this may be my favorite one of all. A deliciously perfect blend of sweet and spice, this honey will make your holidays merry and bright. We especially recommend combining our Elderberry Wellness Tea with our Cinnamon Infused Raw Honey!

Check out our Elderberry Wellness Tea HERE!

Once you’ve tried our Cinnamon Infused Raw Honey, we would LOVE to hear your feedback! Leave us a review on our product page to let us know what you think. 

Christmas is just around the corner! We hope you can enjoy this season of joy and peace with those you love. As always, thank you for supporting our small business!

We’ve got just a little over 30 days left in 2020...WHAT. A. YEAR. I’ll be honest, as crappy as 2020 has been for most of us, it’s been a pretty incredible year for me (you may want to punch me for saying that). But it’s true! Here are some recaps (good, bad, ugly) of how my 2020 went:

• This year my business has grown beyond my wildest imagination. I’ve faced some hard leadership decisions but have come out on the other end stronger and wiser. 
• Our team grew from 9 people to 20. Growing that fast brought some challenges, but I am CONVINCED we have the absolute best people on our team. They work hard and value each other. It’s an awesome place to work.
• This summer was a pretty significant awakening for my husband and I on the racial issues in our country. I’m still learning and listening on this journey toward racial reconciliation, as I know many of you are too.
• During the spring quarantine, my kids became BEST FRIENDS.
• Despite the quarantining, we were still able to get our vacations in and make some great family memories.
• I chose to homeschool my kids and while everyone (myself included) thought I was a little crazy, I have loved it so much. 
• My husband stepped down from his job to support me in my business journey, and while it’s only been a few weeks of this new normal, we can feel the peace it has brought our whole family. 
• I developed a brand new product: Elderberry Gummies! And the launch day of these gummies brought our highest sales volume EVER! Developing a product is WAY more complicated than I ever knew. It was not an easy process but so energizing and fun along the way.
• I started to work out early in the mornings 3x weekly. When I’m working out regularly, I am WAY happier and I think more clearly.

I am deeply saddened how Covid has impacted our economy and so many small businesses. It feels odd to be thriving in such a difficult season for most people and I know I have a responsibility to pay it forward however I can and share kindness with those around me. Here’s a few of my FAVORITE small businesses and they can ship their goodies to you wherever you live! I know these small business owners personally and absolutely love everything about them and their amazing businesses!

For the guys in your life: Him Gentleman’s Boutique - www.himgb.com
For the girls in your life: Kozy Candles - www.kozykandles.com

Here’s to the end of 2020 and an amazing (fingers crossed) 2021. Take some time today to show kindness to people around you. We need it :-)