Pure, Old-fashioned, Handmade Goats’ Milk Soap!

“Thou art my Hiding Place, and my Shield: I hope in Thy Word.”

Psalm 119:113

 

Well, after too long procrastinating – maybe not procrastinating, I just had too many posts to write in between – I finally share with you our latest adventure in using the products of our farm and turning them into usable items.

Our dream – as I’m sure most of you who have been following my blog for a while well know – is to to have a working, raw milk dairy.

Laws and regulations, however, make that very difficult for a family like ours so progress towards products we can sell to eat or drink is very slow.

But we can make soap!

Making soap is something I have long romanced, but only lately have we been able to really find a recipe that suites our tastes and creates a lovely, moisturizing bar of soap, and seems to turn our well every time!

We’re so thankful to the Lord Jesus for opening this way to us, and opening it in something both my sister and I (who run the farm) enjoy doing so much.

It is so much fun to make soap!

So, after many months of working and struggling with our herd (please don’t remind me of February!), the Lord has finally allowed us to turn out some lovely soaps, and also to purchase molds for those who are looking for more decorative styles – as opposed to our all-natural, square-formed, wooden-mold soaps which is all we are using ourselves right now. 🙂

We are offering Unscented, Lilac, English Rose, Gardenia, and Oranges and Creme varieties with many more to come.

(Do you think we’d stop here? 🙂 )

There are the designed varietes and the all natural style, all made with all-natural ingredients; gentle oils to soften and moisturize skin, and our own farm-produced raw goats’ milk that is so richly nourishing to the skin.

(If fact its nourishing to everything in your body! We love our goats’ milk! 🙂 Yum!!)

We are offering 4 oz bars of soap at $6.00 a bar which we believe is fair considering others’ going prices for goats’ milk soap – not to mention all the effort and love that goes into making each bar; starting with kidding season in February and moving right on up ’till September or October when our cramping hands milk the last quart from our once-again-pregnant does! 😀

I’m going to look into how I could offer soap for sale directly from my blog, but until then, we are selling it from our Etsy store, “Bouties of His Goodness“, with a starting price of $5.00 a bar.

Our first batches are running out fast, so if you’re interested in trying skin-nourishing, all-natural soap that is made the way our grandmothers used to make it, then hurry over (following the above link), and get your bar!

Leave us a message on the order form telling us what design/scent you prefer.

I know this isn’t my usual blogpost, but we’re so excited about our new soap – and this new adventure in attempting to sell items made from our farm. 🙂

Its a beautiful Saturday though and my sister and I have wonderful plans for our day at home. I’ll probably post again with news of our day – a more-like-me post. 🙂

Until then, the Lord Jesus bless you all, and enjoy your Saturday!!

Monday – a different sort of Monday

Well, contrary to what we all expected, we stayed home again yesterday and were able to do a lot more work at home.
As I may have mentioned, our hay was cut last Friday. Thank The Lord for the warm, sunny weather, because its dried well over the weekend and was tettered yesterday to dry more. This evening, Lordwilling, it will be baled up and brought to the barn.
But first we had to get the barn ready, and we took advantage of the time home and worked on our garden too!

Of course, the garage was full of junk and old hay from the winter’s store. It’s terrible the things time can do to a perfectly organized place if you fail to keep up with it.
Issy made the job easier. 🙂 she came along and kept everyone company.

Then we planted in our “hill” garden, as I call it, up near the apiary. We also covered the entire plot with hay – which was a task! Even with how small it is! – to keep the weeds out, and to help nourish the ground.

We weren’t quite alone here either; Missy laid in the grass not too far away, and Tucker the cat lounged IN the garden. 🙂
It was late – after four – by the time we finished planting a nice stand of tomatoes, cucs, eggplant, peppers, and squash.
Mama had the idea to send Daddy for a pizza, and by the time we were washed up, he was back and we all settled down to a very unhealthy meal of pizza, soda, and ice cream with a nice movie of Abbott and Costello. 🙂

It was a full day’s work. But a good one. 🙂 Mama and Daddy worked longer in the garage and gardens after supper. We helped some, but then left to do our chores before dark.
Before bed, we had to in mold our batch of unscented soap and mix up a new one – this time with orange and tea tree oils. It smelled soooo good!! 🙂

Here’s pictures of the finished unscented soap, and of the milk/lye mixture for the next batch.

I scribbled to my silent friend late before I turned out my lights and went to sleep.

It was a lovely, hard day – full of hard work, sweat and achy limbs, but full of family, Jesus, and our farm.

Just the sort of day I love.

Only, with a bit longer rest in the evenings after all that work! 😉

How did you spend your Monday?

The Lord’s Day

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”

Psalm 121:1

Yesterday was such a beautiful Lord’s Day that I must share it with you all.

Usually on the Lord’s Day we make a special effort not to do any kind of labor that is not especially required (such as chores, cooking dishes, and sometimes laundry). We aren’t legalistic about what to do or what not to do – sometimes we even make an exception and sell/buy something on the Lord’s Day – but we try to set aside a special day for Jesus; especially from the usual work and labor of the week (like cleaning house, doing yard work, working on our jobs/paper work for our jobs, even usually sewing or doing things like making soap etc. – you get the idea.)

Yesterday was a special day for all of us, though. We have visitors coming next Saturday and will be working all week, so only able to fit in preparations for their visit late in the evenings when we come home and are so tired. So yesterday, even if it was the Lord’s Day, we did a little special sewing and a few other things.

And enjoyed it. 🙂 I think the important thing about reverencing the Lord’s Day is that we set it aside for Him. If we do have to work, it should be something that is not all-consuming; something we can set aside if need be, and something we can enjoy as we do it.

And I don’t think I have to mention how much we enjoy sewing, cheesemaking, trying new things, cooking, or anything else that pertains to homemaking. 😀

Of course we had our usual chores.

We have begun weaning our seven bottle babies, so even with the cow drinking two gallons a day we’re getting much more fresh, delicious, rich goats’ milk than we can ever use!

We’re keeping most of the milk in the mornings and making cheese out of it in preparation for Saturday – as well as making soap and hopefully later this week we’ll get to make Mama some cajeta! 🙂 She loves caramel. 🙂

We did have a sad side of chores yesterday morning though.

Excuse the bad picture, but this is trying to show the eggshells and feathers we found from our destroyed hen and her brood of 20 or so eggs. Some varmint got in the barn last night and busted up all the eggs with chicks in them and made off with the hen as well. Needless to say, this was very discouraging.

The cheesemaking as well was discouraging.

Simple mozzarella gone wrong. Sigh…. Just wasn’t our day I guess. We accidentally left the curd too long in the rennet while we were dressing and preparing for morning services. It was difficult to cut and stretching was impossible. But still, its cheese. It mightn’t be mozzarella  but its cheese and we’ll enjoy it on onion sandwiches – or maybe even pizza! 😀

The rest of the day, however, was a quiet joy.

(Excuse the tiny pictures; Iphone has its own mind sometimes….)

We went out and picked roses and lemon balm to try our hand at essential oils and Daddy showed us the plants he’s been working on in his spare time.

We both enjoyed wearing our new dresses we finished Saturday. 🙂

The roses and lemon balm were cut up, bruised and cooked for long hours in olive oil in the oven and crock pot.

We poured it up into jars last night but did not remove the leaves.

We’ll do that today, Lordwilling, and see how it turns out. Our roses were not very aromatic, but it did smell ok by the time it was done cooking but the lemon balm oil smelled much better!

While that was cooking we had a nice, sweet visit with some very dear friends, the Clarkes. They visit about once every two weeks and buy eggs from us and we sit and chat and exchange plants. 🙂 Daddy and Mrs. Clarke are both very avid gardeners. 🙂

Daddy came down to the barn in the evening and helped us block off the remaining broody hen’s nest with all her eggs in it. She had deserted them and was laying on new ones. All we can do is pray that the older ones weren’t chilled; we put them back under her.

It was a blessing having Daddy down at the barn last night. He’s not all that involved in the animals – goats aren’t his favorite four-leggers 🙂 – but I think he really saw the work and love we put into the animals last night; we stood around at least a half hour just petting the goats and talking about their individualities.

It was a lovely evening.

Before evening service we cut up the batch of soap we made Saturday. (Its the batch in the front). Our supplies are supposed to come Tuesday. I can’t wait – we’ll be soapmaking like crazy then! 🙂

After service we finished the evening with a family movie time; Abbot and Cosetllo’s Who done it? 

It was a special time we all enjoyed together – and the movie was great. 😀

I love my family, and I love the times we spend together – surrounded by the things we love and the animals we love and the things we love to do.

At home.