Big Pink Farm

I have a secret.  Ok, it's not really a secret now that I'm about to tell you:

Houston, we have a soap page!

I was overly optimistic when I announced my plans for the page way back in January.  I mean, how hard could it be?  Famous last words...  Anyway, we're up and running with it.  Thanks for your patience!

Speaking of soap, I thought I'd share a couple of photos of the soapmaking process.  In this one, you see the warm coconut, palm, and olive oils awaiting the addition of a goat milk/lye mixture.

After adding the goat milk/lye soup in a slow stream and stirring like crazy the whole time, the saponification process begins.  When it's done, it looks like pudding and is ready to be poured into the mold.  Like this:

After that I put it in a warm place until the next day when I carefully unmold it.  Then Roger cuts it into big bars and sets it aside to cure.  A few weeks later, this is what it looks like:

Now you know.  Cool, huh?

I'm hoping to distract you, dear reader, from noticing that I have not posted anything new, despite my promise.  So here's some photos!  The weather here has alternated between spring-like (which means lots of mud!) to arctic-like (which means single-digit temps!).  The weird weather fluctuations have been rough on the kids.  The people haven't liked it much, either.

 

This little one is very friendly.  Natalie usually is, too.

 Sunbathing kids.  If you look carefully, you will see a children's playhouse in the background that we were forced to put into active duty in the goat shed when the temperatures dipped into the single digits with winds over 30 mph.

 

See the little red tongue?  I love that.

 

Quick!  Find the duck in the snow!

So did it work?  Have you forgotten all about my empty promises?  Stay tuned for further updates, but let's just say the timetable is fairly fluid.