At The Freckled Farm Soap Company we offer custom orders for our goat milk soap. This can be for wedding or party favors, or even a gift. This week we sent out a custom order for a Bed and Breakfast in NY! These half bars will be used as their guest soaps.
If you would like to learn more about our custom soap orders please visit our website.
For the longest time Bryce used our Castile Goat Milk Soap because she had incredibly sensitive skin. If her clothes or sheets were not washed in a free and clear detergent she would break out in a horrible rash. She was able to use our Castile without any issues, so for her first year and a half of life that is what she used. We started testing small areas of her skin at around eighteen months and she never had a reaction to our soaps, even though she was still reacting to things like laundry detergent. She was able to use our full line of soaps without a problem, so we started to allow her to pick out her own soaps from the reject drawer (the drawer of soaps that have flaws or didn’t make weight that we can’t sell). She loves smelling the soaps, so it is always a treat for her to pick out a new one. Her favorite soap to use is the Sunrise Citrus. She absolutely loves the scent!
If you are interested in trying our Sunrise Citrus Goat Milk Soap or our Castile you can find them here.
Breckin had a hard time picking a favorite soap. He kept saying he loves them all! However, when we put them all in front of him and asked him to pick one he picked Lemongrass Green Tea as his favorite. He likes the fact that it is green (naturally colored by the green tea) because it is his favorite color. He also loves the way that it smells. Although, he wants it stated that he really does love them all!
If you are interested in trying out our Lemongrass Green Tea Goat Milk Soap yourself you can find it here!
My absolute favorite soap is our Peppermint Eucalyptus. This was the second soap variety that we ever made (Castile was the first) and it was instantly my favorite. We have had dozens of new varieties come through the company and while many of them have come close none have been able to match the Peppermint Eucalyptus in my eyes.
The peppermint tingles and is incredibly refreshing. During the summer, when I am dealing with the super high temperatures, I always take a shower when I come in from farm chores with my Peppermint Eucalyptus because it feels like it is actually cooling me down! This little fact makes it sound like it wouldn’t be a great soap to use during the winter… but that is not the case. In the winter it is refreshing without being cold and you have the added benefit of the eucalyptus which has always been great in combination with the steam of the shower for my sinuses.
If you are interested in trying our Peppermint Eucalyptus Goat Milk Soap yourself you can find it here.
In last week’s Fun Farm Fact I told you that Nubians are the most common dairy goat breed in the US. Many people ask us why we picked Nubians as the goats for our farm. After all, there are several to choose from. Well after today’s fact you might understand.
While Nubians give less milk than the other standard breed goats their milk has the highest butterfat content! Their milk is creamier, richer, and is ideal for making cheeses, yogurts, other diary products…. and of course soaps!
At markets and craft shows we often have customers ask us what our favorite soaps are. This gave us an idea! Over the next four weeks you will learn the favorite soaps of the four members of The Freckled Farm family.
I, Kevin, will start. My favorite soap is /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\<— (drumroll)…….. Canine Shampoo. Yes, that’s right. My favorite of all of our soaps is the one we made for dogs. I’ll give you a second to think of any appropriate jokes that apply. . . . . OK now that the initial shock has worn off let me explain. Canine Shampoo uses our standard oil blend of the base. Then we add ground oatmeal, lavender, tea tree, and rosemary essential oils. To me it is the perfect blend. It has a little exfoliant in the ground oatmeal. It’s earthy and smells great. I first started using it just as a shampoo bar, but quickly realized that there was no need to switch to another bar after washing my hair. So now this has become my whole body bar. It’s also really good for me because I have very oily skin and the mixture of lavender and tea tree work really well together.
If you haven’t already you can subscribe to our blog to learn about the whole family’s favorite soaps as well as all sorts of fun facts and happenings around the farm.
At The Freckled Farm Soap Company we do whatever we can to ensure that we are making products that are good for you. One of the ways we do that is to never use dyes or other colorants in our soap. Yet, our soaps have very different colors. So I thought it would be a good idea to go over what it is that gives our soaps their color.
Many of our soaps end up being a nice tan/cream color. This is primarily due to the color that the milk turns when heated by the lye. We make our soaps at room temperature all year long, so there is always a little bit of variation in the exact temperature of the soap when it is set aside to cool.
Aside from the ambient temperature there are a few other factors that influence color:
Essential Oils: Though many essential oils come out mostly clear, some can have some natural color to them. The most notable of these in my mind is Orange Essential Oil. This is what gives our Sunrise Citrus soap its orange color.
Other ingredients: Of course anything we add to the soap has the ability to change the color.
We use a green tea powder to make our Lemongrass Green Tea soap since we don’t want to add any unnecessary water. This gives that soap a nice green/brown color. One thing to note about this soap is that due to the tea this soap is prone to oxidation before it cures. This can result in different shades of green and brown from the same batch of soap.
Rosewood Salt is made with Himalayan Pink Salt, which naturally colors it.
Deep Sea, is made with Kelp and Spirulina powders. The Spirulina especially gives that soap a deep green color.
Honey Oatmeal is a warm honey color due to…. well, Honey!
In the end anything that colors our soap, as nice as some of them are, are there only for their intended topical or aromatic benefits. The colors that those ingredients produce are just a nice addition.
I’m sorry I missed last week’s What’s up Wednesday. The busy season for the soap business, photography business, farm, and garden are all in full gear… at the same time. We are so incredibly grateful to be this busy. I hope it stays like this!
So much has happened on the farm in the last two weeks. Four of the eight goat kids have gone to their new homes. They all went to good homes and we couldn’t be more thrilled. We still have 3 bucks that we are trying to sell. Selling bucks is no easy task. Farms only need one or two to breed to their entire goat herd and from what I am hearing from other farms there have been an unusually large number of bucks born this year. We were lucky to only have had fifty percent bucks… not many in this area have been so lucky. I am hoping these sweet boys at least go as pets to someone. They are all so gentle and have amazing personalities.
We moved the the bantam chicks outside into their new coop! They were getting tight in their brooder and we were getting tired of having the clean it twice a day… chicks create a lot of dust and dirt. We purchased a coop last year to use for our free range chickens to sleep and lay their eggs. It ended up being a really poor quality, even though we paid a pretty penny for it, so we decided to move the free rangers back into the sturdy coop where they were safe. The “free ranger” coop sat empty for a long time. We weren’t sure what to do with it. It would be a waste to just throw it out, but we were pretty sure it would just fall apart should a dog or other predictor decide to jump up against it. When our friend Rachel brought us the bantam chicks we knew we needed to find them a home once they were done with their brooder, so we decide to reinforce the coop and make it into a tractor, allowing the chickens to help us with pest control around the farm. We removed the entire bottom of the coop… meaning we pulled it away because it had basically wasted away and had already fallen through twice from the weight of the chickens (see… piece of junk). We sat the coop directly on the ground and used the run area the coop once sat on as a run for the front of the coop. It was just the right size considering they are only bantams and will be moved daily. We totally removed one set of nesting boxes because they too had fallen apart (we had half the number of chickens in this coop than it called for by the way). Kevin reenforced or replaced all the areas that were falling apart or felt weak. It has made a cute little chicken tractor! I am so glad we were able to use it and it won’t go to waste… I hate waste.
In soap news, our Summer Goat Milk Soap is on the curing racks! I am so ready for this soap to be done! It is so wonderful for summer skin. I used it all last summer and I’ve missed it so much. It’s made with green tea and aloe, so it’s soothing for skin that has had a lot of sun exposure. It will debut on the first day of summer later this month!
Whew! It’s been a hot week around here. I am really having to work hard to keep the plants happy. The goats have been going through several buckets of water a day… Where they normally need to be filled once a day, maybe twice, we are having to fill them at least three times a day and the girls are walking around panting. It’s May! What is August going to be like? I deal with the heat better than most (I love it actually) and even I have had some moments in the last few days where I was uncomfortable… Then I think back to the winter and I remember that this weather is much preferred!
All of our tomatoes are finally in the garden. I haven’t counted yet, but there are well over a hundred plants out there. We also have a one hundred square foot bed of sweet peppers completed. We are working on prepping the other sweet pepper bed now. That will hopefully be done by tonight or Thursday at the latest. We move on to the eggplant and okra bed after that.
The honeysuckle is blooming all over the farm. It’s one of my favorite scents of all time. It immediately transports me back to my childhood. I have always wanted to make a soap that is scented with honeysuckle, but because we only use essential oils we have never been able. A few years ago I attempted to make a honeysuckle infused oil, but made a few mistakes so it turned out horribly. I am trying again this year… so here’s hoping I can make it work. If so, we may be able to make a small batch containing this amazing spring scent.
At the end of this week the baby goats start to go to their new homes. It’s bittersweet to see them go, but they are going to great homes where they will be spoiled and loved!
Finally, we will be back at the West End Farmers Market this week! So Saturday you can find us there and at South of the James. There will only be a handful of weekends this summer where we will be missing from West End, so Kevin and I can photograph a wedding together.
So, I am getting these posted a little late this month. What can I say… It’s the start of the busy season. Here are the “other” pictures (the photographs that weren’t the “picture of the day” from our 365 project, but were still posted to our Instagram during the month of April). To follow the images from the farm in real time follow us on Instagram @Thefreckledfarm
