December Soap of the Month!

For the month of December my Christmas Wreath scented soap will be on sale for $3.50 a bar. A nice balsam scent to get you in the Holiday mood.

I have also added lotion sticks to my online shop. These make great stocking stuffers. They are made with a concentrated blend of oils and butters that are great for those dry areas on the body, like elbows and heels.

October Soap of the Month

What a wonderful way to get your home ready for the season. This pumpkin scented soap is great to use and also makes a very practical gift to give away.
Special price $3.50 per 4 ounce bar, through the month of October.

September Soap of the Month

I decided on my Lavender soap as the September soap of the month, because Lavender is a wonderful scent that is loved by most.

This bar of Handmade soap is made with Lavender Essential Oil. The wonderful herbal scent of Lavender is known to be soothing and relaxing. People love this soap for it's creamy and smooth texture.

I really wanted to offer my new soap Cranberry/Orange, but it hasn't finished curing yet and will be ready in a couple of weeks. I have been busy making my fall and Holiday soaps to get ready for the big Craft Show season that I have coming up. I do 2 Harvest Markets in September and 5 other shows through October and November. I would love to do more, but all three of my boys are active in sports and I love to go to each and every game that I can. I hope everyone is having a wonderful end of summer. I'm hoping for a beautiful and warm September.

Working with concrete.

I never thought that I would ever help pour concrete, but that is what I did the other day. I am used to sitting at a desk and doing bookkeeping or making soaps, but a change was nice. I looked at it as a free upper body workout!

We poured the floor to our new goat parlor and also poured the walls for the new cheese/soap/bakery shop.

New member of the Farm!

My niece Megan loves animals, here she is with one of the new members of the farm family. This sweet jersey calf was born in July and the kids decided to name her Peanut Butter. When Peanut butter grows up, her rich milk will be used to make wonderful cheese on the farm. We are still in the construction phase of the cheese plant and hopefully will be up and running by the first of next year.

August Soap of the Month:
This bar of Handmade soap is made with Real Ground Oats and Honey. There is no fragrance or preservatives added, Just plain natural goodness. Oatmeal is a great exfoliate and makes a very gentle and mild soap.

One of my best sellers. This soap is high in olive oil which is readily absorbed by your skin making it a great moisturizer.

To purchase you can either go onto my Etsy website www.naturalgoatsoap.etsy.com
or 1000 markets website www.naturalgoatsoap.1000markets.com

Free Giveaway

I have a free giveaway going on at www.ohiogirltalks.blogspot.com
I am giving away 2 bars of soap and a lip balm of your choice.
Check it out & good luck!

Relaxing at the Lake

Any chance we get, which is definitely not as often as we like, we head over to the lake to enjoy fishing, reading, watching the ducks and just relaxing at my families camp.
We have a kayak and canoe which the boys love to fish from, I love that there is no TV or video games, just nature for them to enjoy.

The neighbors on both side of us rarely visit their camps, so it's usually very quite with no one around.....which we don't mind one bit. We also have friends a few camps up, so if we are up for a visit-we only need to walk a short distance.

The Discovery of Soap

The story told in 1,000 B.C. Rome, about the discovery of soap on Sapo Hill, has been repeated so often that mythical elements have taken on factual proportions.

This is how the story goes: Women did their laundry at the base of Sapo Hill and at a higher elevation animal sacrifices had taken place. The women noticed that their laundry was coming out cleaner when they washed it in the soapy clay substance that oozed down the hill into the water. It was later discovered that this cleansing substance was formed when the rendered animal fat soaked down through the wood ashes and into the clay soil.

This version of the story is told in The Natural Soap Book by, Susan Miller Cavitch

So, from this discovery, soap was made much the same way by our grandparents. Water was usually collected in a rain barrell filled with wood ashes making lye, or Sodium Hydroxide. Some of these earlier soaps were harsh or lye heavy, because they did not have accurate ways to weigh or measure the lye. Today Sodium Hydroxide is much more consistent, and is easier to make a mild and gentle soap where all of the sodium hydroxide has saponified fully with the oils.The end result is a bar of soap with no sodium hydroxide present. Soap makers today do a process called superfatting, where they add more oils than are needed to react with the sodium hydroxide. This method leaves extra oils in the soap, therefore becoming more moisturizing to the skin.

I hope you enjoyed this step back in history to learn a little about how soap was discovered.

Just in time for the gardening season. Well....actually here in Vermont we can't plant too much yet, because there is still the threat of frost, but some seeds can be planted early, like peas and onions. My garden isn't as big as it used to be, I have cut the size down some because it kept getting away from me in the summer. I am very lucky that I come from a large family and there is always a surplus of extra vegetables from one of my brothers or sisters.

I have been busy trying to get my flower beds cleaned out, so you can actually see the new shoots coming up through the ground. I love having flowers around and I enjoy my fresh herbs for cooking too.

So......in the spirit of gardening, I am offering my Gardener's Scrub bar as the May soap of the month.

Cornmeal is added to this bar of soap as an exfoliate. Exfoliates help to get rid of debris that collects on the skin's surface. They add texture to the soap's lather increasing the cleansing qualities. The grainier lather gently scrubs away the dirt and dead skin cells while stimulating the healthier cells below. This soap is excellent for scrubbing away the stubborn garden soils from the little cracks in your hands. A blend of lemongrass, rosemary, and orange essential oils in this recipe help to create a wonderfully clean scented fragrance that will make any "green thumb" enjoy cleaning up after digging around in the soil.

With a bar of this soap next to your sink, you can go ahead and play in dirt all day long if you want!

Introduction

Hi Welcome to my first blog. My name is Susan and I live in the beautiful state of Vermont. I have been making goat milk soaps for 3 years and have two online shops and sell at the local Farmers' Market and at craft shows. I use goat milk in my soaps because it makes a mild and gentle soap with a creamy lather. Most people love my soaps once they try them and don't go back to commercial soaps.
I get my goat's milk from my sister's dairy goat farm. I enjoy finding ways to try to give her more value for her milk. I have also been making cheese from goat and cow's milk.