Soap Making

On Monday and Wednesday nights of this week, I've been making soap. Monday, I made unscented Goat's Milk soap in bars and the molded Nigerian goats and Nubian goat heads. Wednesday night I made some Happy Camper soap. The Happy Camper soap is a good outdoor soap with citronella and eucalyptus oils. I love the citronella smell. This soap will be ready to be packaged and sold in 6 weeks after it cures. Tonight, Thursday, I plan on making some Shepherd's Pride soap that contains goat's milk and lanolin. I made a quick trip to Sadie's in Stokesdale this morning to purchase some aloe vera liquid that goes into this recipe. They were out of it the last time I visited so I had to make a special trip to purchase it. Soap making is getting easier and quicker for me to do. I continue to find ways to make the process easier, faster with less cleanup time involved. I've been using a different stick blender this week and it has make the mixing process so much easier. This Hamilton Beach stick blender doesn't overheat like my previous one did and blends the oils and milk together without much effort. Today, the sun is shining but we got off to a cool start this morning in the mid 40's. As I was getting my goat's ready to milk on the milking stand, the steam was rolling off of their udders as I washed them. I think they enjoy the hot water bath. I'm milking three Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats now. One of them, Sara, has never been milked before. I just recently took her kids off of her to wean them. Sara's naturally polled doe kid is being picked up on Sunday to live in Sanford, NC. I've been milking Sara for three days now and she already knows the routine. Poppy went out to visit Stormy this morning. She is the last of my Nubian does that are being bred for March babies. The others are being held back until March, 2010 to be bred. We also did all our yard mowing today since we will be having a busy weekend and some showers are in the forecast. We are going to NC A&T Technical State University early Saturday morning to attend the Swine & Cattle Artificial Insemination workshop at their farm in Greensboro. The university farm is situated on 490 acres at 3136 McConnell Road. The workshop has two sessions including a "hands on" segment. The Swine segment runs from 8:30 AM until noon and the cattle session will start at 12:30 PM and will run until 4:30 PM. A light lunch will be provided in between the two sessions. This workshop is being given with grant money from A&T and is free for participants. They also will reimburse you for your round-trip mileage from your place of residence to the university farm. These courses normally run $250 - $350 per participant so we thought we would take advantage of this learning experience. Early on Sunday morning the Dairy Goat show will be at the Dixie Classic Fairgrounds. I hope to attend some of that show before heading back to the farm for some goat deliveries. Rabbit sales are up. I've sold many Tennessee Redback bunnies this past week for hunt training and the sales of Lionhead and Mini Rex rabbits are picking up. I've also begun to sell some of my Flemish Giant bunnies this week since they have reached the 8 week old point.