Hello from the Farm! It is hot here in Florida, and things are slowing down with Quinn’s goats. The mamas’ milk is drying up, and in about a month or so, it will be time to start breeding. We like for the goats to kid around the first of year. The weather is nice, and the mamas seem to provide more milk when it is not so hot.
While Quinn’s goat milking duties will go down, soap making gears up. Since we don’t home school over the summer, we have more time to stock up for the fall and Christmas seasons. Now is the time that we can try out new scents, think about any new formulations we might want, and determine if we want any new items in our store. I am thinking about selling our Emergency Hand Balm this fall. It is fantastic for chapped, sore hands. Our daughter, Grace, used it a ton when we went to Tennessee this past January to experience cold weather. Hand washing with industrial, public restroom soap and cold weather were NOT a good combination for her poor hands. I think that maybe our friends in colder climates may appreciate the relief she got from the hand balm we make.
Have you ever wondered why we choose the particular blend of oils as ingredients in our soap? For example, you may have noticed that almost all of our soaps contain coconut oil. Why do we love it so much? Well, coconut oil is a mainstay of any soap maker. It adds suds to the soap, is moisturizing, has anti-bacterial properties, and can reduce inflammation. What is even better, is that it is abundant, and relatively inexpensive (compared to something like jojoba oil, for instance). Despite these wonderful properties, when a soap contains more than about 30% coconut oil, it can be drying. Hard to imagine that an oil can be drying, but there you have it. For this reason, we add several other oils to our recipes for their benefits. With a mix of oils, we can have the suds from the coconut, plus the skin enhancing contributions from sunflower, rice bran and castor oils. What are those benefits? I’ll detail those in another blog.
Our goal is to have a hard, sudsy, creamy (from the goat milk), silky smooth bar that is good to your skin. Coconut oil is a piece of that puzzle.
If you enjoy our soap, please leave us a 5 star review, and we will email you a 20% discount code to use for your next purchase!
Soli Deo Gloria,
Dana Pittman