I'm rained out of the garden for a few minutes so let's talk about soap again.  The last time we talked about making goat milk soap, we kept it as simple as possible since it actually requires a lot of equipment, materials and coordination to make a super simple batch of soap.  And, I do recommend starting out as simple as possible just to experience putting all the elements together.

But of course super simple begs to be made better, and with soap that means the addition of luscious stuff like essential oils, fragrance oils, colors, exfoliants, salts, and any other beautiful things you can think of.

I'm still trying to pour the perfect bar of soap.  Not there yet but so far, my favorite is the salt bar.  Surprisingly, adding a whole bunch of sea salt soap to your soap makes it feel really soft on your skin.  And by all accounts, it's good for your complexion too.  Add a beautiful fragrance like Rain, and wow, you really have a luxurious bar of soap.  Another of my favorites is to add honey and oats to the basic goat milk bar, no fragrance thanks.  That's like health food for your skin.  It's good to take care of yourself!

Where to get soap supplies and other stuff:

You might have a craft store or a homesteading supply store in your town, fun!  My town isn't really big enough for a specialty store so I have to shop online.  As you know, Amazon is always a good starting place; everything is there, molds, stamps, ingredients of all kinds.  I can pass on a couple of suppliers I've had great luck with too.  Bramble Berry is a really good source and an easy to use website.  The link is just above this.  I love Mountain Rose Herbs for essential oils and organic flowers and herbs. https://www.mountainroseherbs.com/
I've had good service for basic supplies like oils and lye from Essential Depot: http://www.essentialdepot.com/  There are so many good resources, look around and find some for yourself.  Saponifier Magazine: http://saponifier.com/  is a super place to find ideas and suppliers.  And a good forum is always helpful when you have questions or problems:  http://www.talksoapforum.com/

There you have it!  You know everything I know about making soap at home, I hope you have a lot of fun and make something beautiful.  Let me know how it goes.

    Cashmere goats are typically considered a dual purpose goat, luscious fiber and meat.  My herd are mostly quite small and any one of them wouldn't net more than a couple of chevon burgers.  I can't actually imagine butchering Betty or Goldie anyway, so Cloud Valley goats are just single purpose goats.  But, as any goat farmer knows, one goat leads to another, so lets have milk.
    The first year of milking I actually milked a couple of my cashmere mamas.  It was a lot of work for not a lot of milk, but I loved the milk.  So I bought a young Alpine dairy goat, Bluebell.

    Bluebell's baby, Louie, didn't look like the others, and boy was he big!  Just as I'd hoped, Bluebell gave me lots of milk.  I learned how to make cheese, I put milk in my tea (yum!), I froze some milk in ice cube trays for soap making.  
    Then, I learned how to make soap.  I'm still a beginner but I'm happy to share my experiences.  Like bread baking or riding a unicycle, making a good bar of soap takes a  little trial and error to get the feel for it.  My first batch never reached trace and I poured it on the driveway to keep the dust down.

    There are several ways to make soap.  I use one called the cold process technique because it seems the most appropriate for goat milk.  It is basically dissolving Sodium Hydroxide (the big name for lye) in liquid and then blending it with oils or fat.  The lye and oil saponify, a fancy word for the chemical reaction between the lye and oil that makes the soap harden.
                                                        

The most important ingredients for making soap are safety items, goggles and gloves.  I also like to wear an old long sleeve t-shirt.  Don't mess with lye, it can hurt you!  So here's a list of the stuff I use to make cold process goat milk soap:

                Goggles
                Gloves
                Cheap plastic 1/2 gallon pitcher
                Cheap stainless steel 10 quart stock pot
                Electric hand blender (also not expensive)
                                                                             2 cup measuring cup
                                                                             Long handled spoon (a narrow spatula is pretty
                                                                                                      handy too)
                                                                             Kitchen Scale (making soap is like a chemistry
                                                                                                      experiment in your kitchen, you
                                                                                                      have to measure accurately by
                                                                                                      weight)
                                                                             A length of 2 inch PVC pipe to mold the soap

Now the ingredients for a very simple pure and soft facial quality
soap:
                700 grams Olive Oil
                300 grams Coconut Oil
                380 grams goat milk that has been frozen into ice                       cubes
                142 grams NaOH (lye)

We'll talk later about where you get this stuff and other soap making supplies.

Here's how you do it:

                Put on your goggles and gloves.
                Put your plastic pitcher on the kitchen scale and tare it (zero it).
                Measure goat milk ice cubes directly into the plastic pitcher.  
                Let the ice cubes melt just a little bit, so there's a little melted milk in the pitcher and the cubes are a tad softer.
                Put the stock pot on the scale and tare it.
                Measure the coconut oil into the stock pot.  300 grams.
                Measure the olive oil into the stock pot.  700 grams brings the total weight to 1000 grams.
                Warm the stock pot gently so the coconut oil becomes liquid.  I just put the pot in the sink filled with warm water.  I put the plastic pitcher with the milk ice cubes in the warm water too, but don't melt the cubes too much, you need ice.
                Prepare your soap molds while the oils are warming to liquid.  I use a couple one foot lengths of PVC pipe.  To prepare them I oil the inside surfaces and seal off the bottoms with saran wrap and packing tape.  You could also line a shoe box with saran wrap, or oil a bread pan, or you could buy a fancy
silicone mold or some cool soap molds, whatever.
                Put the 2 cup measuring cup on the scale and tare it.
                Measure the lye into the cup.
                Fill a sink or large bowl with icy cold water and place your plastic pitcher with milk cubes in the cold water.
                Slowly pour the measured lye into the pitcher stirring it into the milk cubes to dissolve it.  
                Note that it gets hot!  Refresh the icy cold water in the bath if you need to so the lye mixture doesn't get too hot.  
                Note that it stinks!  Make sure you have lots of air circulation in your room so you can breathe fresh air while you're dissolving the lye.
                When the lye is dissolved, pour it into the stock pot with the oils.
                Stir it in with your hand blender.  Run the blender for a minute or so, then just stir the mixture around for a couple minutes, then run the blender for a bit, then just stir for a while.  This process takes several minutes so crank up your favorite music and keep at it for a while.  Be careful to give your blender breaks so you don't overheat it or wear it out.
                Stop blending when the mixture reaches "trace".  Trace is when the mix begins to thicken, like a soft pudding.  When you lift the blender out of the mix it holds its shape a little bit.
                Pour the soap into your molds.
                Wrap the molds in a thick towel to retain heat and put them out of the way to cure overnight.
                The next day the soap should be firm to the touch and ready to pop out of the molds.  If the soap isn't firm enough to come out of the molds cleanly, give it more time to cure in the molds.
                It is helpful to put the molds in the freezer for a couple of hours before unmolding the soap.
                When I use the PVC pipe for molds I put them in the freezer for a while then I take them out to the shop and put them in the table vise and push the soap out with a stick.
                Next, we'll let the soap cure for a few days or a week.  Then if it's molded in a form that needs to be cut up, cut it up.  Finally, let it cure for at least a month before using.

Tomorrow, or maybe the day after, we can talk about adding other things to the soap to make it more nutritional, to add texture or fragrance.  Also, I'll put in a few links for resources.  Until then, dream soap dreams!