Lola Carter and Momo
Looking for a yummy holiday gift? Lola Carter and her husband, Stephen raise goats and they make their living selling caramel candies, soaps and a bath scrub made with their goat milk. They sell a variety of caramel flavors – Pumpkin Pie, Salted Vanilla, Chocolate, S’mores, and Cinnamon Rolls (shown below).
You can purchase their products at their farm or you can order from them at their website – https://www.twisted-acres.com/
Lola makes these caramels in small batches – triple a normal recipe which is enough for 30 boxes. The whole family wraps each one of them by hand.
Cassidy, a candy apprentice.
Lola also makes chevre and fromage blanc for her family.
She told us she doesn’t even have to heat up the chevre. She brings it into the kitchen when it’s fresh from the goat and sprinkles our chevre culture on it. After a couple of minutes, she stirs the culture into the milk and then she lets it set for 18-24 hours before she drains it in butter muslin.
She uses it for anything you would use cream cheese in, including her wildly popular chocolate chevre balls. For those, she takes 1 cup of chevre and mixes it with 1/2 cup sugar and 1 Tbsp vanilla. Then, she rolls them into little 1″ balls and freezes them. Then, she dips each one in melted chocolate.
Their Story
Lola sent us this background information about her family and their business:
Twisted Acres Farms is owned and operated by Stephen and Lola Carter. Stephen and Lola were married on Halloween 2014 and had their first child earlier in that same year.
Halloween, 2018 – Cassidy, Vincent and Ellie
Stephen is a wounded combat veteran who was trying to raise a family, work and attend college. The pressures of city life was too much to handle and the family made the decision to move out onto a larger piece of property where there were no close neighbors.
Farming has given Stephen a purpose. Every day is another battle. Having a job to do every day and having a herd of animals depending on his care has kept him grounded and literally saved his life more than once.
Stephen with his Caucasian Ovcharka, Django
Their young son, Vincent had a milk allergy and needed to be raised on goats milk, so naturally, the family bought their own dairy goat to have their own source of milk. Their love for goats grew and their herd expanded to over 30 goats in almost three years! That is a lot of goats milk!
Unfortunately, there were already two farms in their small town selling goats milk and Lola had a hard time breaking through the marketplace to sell any milk. Lots of late night google searches and exploration of dairy laws in the state of Oklahoma led to one thing: candy. So on a whim, she bought some supplies and a recipe book to make some caramel. Rather than sell her first batch, she gave it all away to friends and family for “market research.”
The results were overwhelming! People loved it and wanted more. So, they began packaging and selling the boxes of candy in local feed stores and through social media marketing. The boxes were selling faster than they could keep up with, so they bought bigger pots and tripled their batch sizes. Now, the candy is sold in three states at retail locations, and ships all over the country and even internationally.
The barn where the goats are milked.
Twisted Acres has been in business since May 2016, our goats are fed a natural diet and kept on lush pasture with plenty of room.
Lola and friends
Interview with Lola
How did you come up with the name of your farm?
Stephen came up with the name randomly one day and it just sort of stuck. We were throwing around a bunch of different options and Twisted Acres just sounded cool. We also joke around that we are kind of “twisted” because we are against the grain doing things that no one else does.
Sunrise
Sunset
When you bought your farm, was there a barn on it?
Yes, the barn was there because the previous owner was a welder and a taxidermist. We saw the sink and we assumed it had running water, but it turned out it didn’t, so we had to put that in.
Now, half the barn has our 10 stall milking stanchion and the other half is dog kennels for my dog training business. I’m in the process of letting that business go.
Our plan is to construct a storefront at the front of the barn where we will sell products made by the members of the Veteran Farmers Coalition – like honey, jams & jellies and beef.
How many goats do you have now?
About 30-ish. We also have 3 beef heifers, 4 pigs, 7 dogs and some turkeys.
Do you have a store there?
Yes, people can come and buy our products any day from 7am-4pm. One of my friends makes soaps and lotions from our milk, so we sell that as well as our caramels and raw goat milk.
Twisted Acres Farm
W Highway 16
Bristow, Oklahoma
918-633-8464
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Twistedacresfarm
Available hours by appointment only:
7:00 AM – 4:00 PM
7 days a week
“Is this the complaint department?”
