Hinds Feet on High Places

My first batch of soap

                ~Greetings from our PA mountain homestead~

Last night I made my first batch of soap! I have been wanting to do this for years after seeing an article in a Country Woman magazine of a woman out west who made soap and sold it to people all over the country. The photo showed shelves of soaps in all colors, and I thought, "I would LOVE to do that too!"

Fast forward about 13 years...we finally have our home in the country and 25 acres. I have a homeschool evaluator who has dairy goats. I have always liked goats and thought I would like to have them (also)   So when I suggest to my husband that perhaps she would sell me milk to make the soap, he returns with the idea that maybe I should just buy some goats from her! Well, I bit right on to that one, you can be sure. After a summer of planning, preparing, and researching, we learned a lot about goats-more than I ever realized there is to know. And during the last month we acquired 6 nice does, 3 currently in milk. Two of my daughters and my husband and I have learned how to milk, and we no longer spend $80. a month on cow's milk from our neighbor's farm. We have plenty of milk to make yogurt, cheese, and soap.

   So last night we made a batch of soap using coconut and olive oils for hard, lathery bars and our own goat's milk. It went amazingly well, as I had braced myself after reading all the warnings about fumes and violent reactions! I added a nice cranberry banana jam fragrance oil which complements the lemony color of the soap. It would be perfect if I were to swirl it with a rich cranberry pigment. We will have to wait a few weeks for it to cure and then we can see how it turned out.

soap

11:33, 2006-Sep-3 .. Posted by hanemlee

That is really neat that you made goats milk soap! I help my mom make soap on occasion and I really like using it, in fact that's the only soap I usually do use. :-)
emy

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09:39, 2006-Sep-4 .. Posted by morningsunshine

congrats! soap is great thing to do. my husband was really nervous about using it at first (scared of the lye) but now will not use anything else!