Hand Milled Soap

Hard to spoon the glop into molds!

Sometimes you will come across fancy soap in the stores labeled as hand milled or French milled.  It means the soap has been processed a second or third time.  The soap is made, grated, dried and then heated and re-poured.  Some of the big firms use big rollers to press the soap.  The result, apparently, is a finer bar of soap: hard, firm, no traces of lye.  Grated soap is often sold at craft places for people who don't want to make soap from scratch.  You can buy pre-made soap already grated, melt in the oven or crock pot, add your own scents and additives without ever going near a jug of lye.  Milling or re-batching, as it is also called, can be used on a batch of soap that has failed for some reason.  For the DIYer, scents and additives go farther and it's much easier.

I had read about hand milled soap during my learning process before making soap.  I was interested in making soap from scratch with our fresh goats milk, so I didn't pay the process much attention.  As I got into soap making, I chose to use flat molds, rather than loaf molds, so that less heat would build up in our soaps, potentially damaging the goats milk.  To get a nice fat bar I was always over-filling the molds and had to trim away the excess, which I saved - largely because I couldn't bear to throw it away!  After a couple of years of making soap, I had quite a collection of these trimmings, long thin pieces cut from the sides of my batches.  So, I decided to try hand milling to use up the bits.

At home, this involved leaving the bits out to dry, then using my food processor to grate them into smaller bits.  Then a little more milk is added for moisture and I heated the whole thing in the oven at low temperature.  I took my basic method from these instructions and this info.  Grating the soap in my food processor was a bit of a mess: Even though the soap was well cured it stuck to the blade and gooped up.  Pour into a casserole, mix in some milk and heat - quite simple.  It took longer to melt to a nice texture but the mixture was still hard to pour, even after being returned to the oven.  I had used bits of our Simple Soap; apparently heating fragranced soap or soaps with herbs just turns into an ugly mess.

Even after sitting out for over a week...

Unfortunately, the resulting soap is a soft, gooey mess.  Too much milk?  Whatever the problem, I've decided that it's not worth fussing over.  The time involved in re-batching is just not worth my while.  If I can only re-batch unscented soaps that doesn't solve my problem of left over trimmings from soaps with essential oils and herbs.  And, with the time involved, a bar of Simple Soap, which sells for $4 normally, would have to sell for $7 or $8!  I don't think my customers would see the advantage.  I cure my soaps long enough that the lye is all used up and they are nice and firm, so I'm not worrying about those concerns.  As I thought about it I realized that the best thing to do is not over-pour and have all the trimmings left over in the first place!  Soaps were going to have to go up in price this summer due to inevitably rising costs, so instead of raising the price, I'll just have a slightly smaller bar of soap without waste.

The Search for Fabulous Citrus Goat Milk Soap

In most of my Cold Process (CP) books, the authors mention the difficulty of citrus fragrance using natural essential oils (EO).  There is something about citrus essential oils that doesn't stand up to the heat produced during the CP process.  And I really, really want a nice, perky citrus soap!

When I'm making soap, I use a very cool method because I don't want to 'damage' or scald all the good things in goats milk during the process.  I want all the skin-friendly proteins and fats to be totally available.  I freeze our fresh, raw milk in ice cube trays and add the lye to the cubes.  I melt all our solid butters then allow them to cool with the fluid oils before adding the milk/lye mixture.  I freeze the soap mixture as soon as I put it in the molds.  Doing these things, I've manage to produce lovely ivory-coloured soaps, without the beige/brown tinge brought on by high heat.

Thinking my cool method may negate the citrus scent problem, I made a small batch a while ago, using just sweet orange EO, which is what I had on hand.  I used almost double the EO that I use for my lavender and peppermint soaps.  I ended up with absolute no citrus fragrance at all!  Huge disappointment!  Because I'm stubborn and really don't want to use the fake fragrance oils, I started some research.

During the Christmas season (which is also kind of the beginning of citrus season), I was seeing a lot of stuff, on the crafty blogs I read and on the Facebook pages I follow, about using up citrus peels.  Posts included drying for potpourri, dehydrating zest and....infusing oils.  Well, I thought, why couldn't I infused the olive oil in my soap recipe, to get a little head start on fragrance.  So I took some of the many mandarin orange peels we were producing, air dried them and then soaked them in olive oil.   That blog post is here.  When finished, the oil had a nice, although light, citrus scent.  I kept the peels and air dried them again, letting them dry really well to use as an exfoliant in the soap.



Then....somebody commented anonymously with one word.....bergamot!  Whoever you are - thank you, thank you, thank you!  I went in search of bergamot EO and love it!  And found five-fold lemon EO while I was at it, which means extra concentrated.  So, a new batch of citrus soap has been made, with sweet orange, five fold lemon and bergamot added just before I pour the mixture into the molds!  After 24 hours, during the cutting, it smelled strongly of fresh soap (somewhat chemical) and very little like anything citrus.  Now two weeks later that 'new soap' scent is gone and a nice but light citrus fragrance remains!  So excited!  The soap has a lovely pale peachy/yellow colour with some darker orange pieces from the ground peel.  The soap needs at least another two weeks to cure, but I have high hopes!

More Soap Experiments

A nice citrus aroma is hard to get, naturally, in soap.  Apparently, the essential oils for orange, lemon, grapefruit and lime do not stand up well to the heat produced during the cold process soap making.  I'd made one small batch in the fall with Sweet Orange essential oil and got almost no hint of fragrance in the finished soap.  Essential oils are expensive, and I'd really like a citrus soap (without resorting to the faux fragrance oils), so I thought I'd try infusing some of the olive oil that I use to make my soap.

Around Christmas, we had a lot of Mandarin oranges around, so it seemed like the perfect time to try an infusion.  I have infused vinegar with the flavor of fresh herbs, a great result and really quite easy.  I was reading about infusing vinegar with orange peels for homemade cleanser and thought I could do the same with oil.  So, I started saving the peels of oranges and air-drying them on the counter.  More moisture in the peels means more possibility of mold/bacteria in the infusion, so I let them all get very dry and crispy.  Shortly after New Years, I packed a jar with the peels and covered them with olive oil.  I had a bag of dried rose buds and tried one with those, as well, because rose essential oil is outrageously expensive!

Six weeks later, they are suppose to be finished.  I can note a colour change in the oils and, sure enough, once I strained out the peels, the orange/olive oil has a light citrus scent.  Now, in our goats milk soap process, we keep everything as cool as possible - to avoid scorching the milk and keeping all the 'good stuff' that milk offers to the skin.  I think that I will keep the infused oil to add at the very end of the process: if the recipe calls for 900 grams of olive oil I will make the soap with 3/4 of that in regular oil and then add 1/4 of the infused oil at the very end of the process, when I add the essential oil.  I think I'll grind up the peels, once they dry, and add them for fragrance and exfoliation.  I have purchased a '5 Fold' lemon essential oil, which is suppose to be much stronger, so I'll make a citrus soap with not just an orange essential oil but the lemon, as well.  Maybe I should acquire some grapefruit essential oil before I do this.

I'm just about to strain the olive oil/rosebud concoction.  It has a nice rose fragrance, but the rose buds seem very soft - I may not be able to grind them to use in the soap, but I can use more of the plain, dried buds.  Should make for some interesting experiments in the kitchen!  What's your favorite fragrance for a soap?  

Homemade Beauty Products!

Facial Moisturizer, the latest version! Luv it!

You know how one thing can lead to another?  Well, getting interested in soap making has led me on a path that may soon see us buying virtually no bath and beauty products!  It's not like this is any huge epiphany or turn-around; at Aagaard Farms we've been making our own stuff and avoiding unnecessary chemicals for a long time!  We've been using baking soda and vinegar for cleaning for years, making our own jams and jellies with our home-grown fresh fruits, raising and drying our own herbs and beans.  It's hard to believe that even six or seven years ago I was happy to pay $40 for a jar of moisturizer, but not any more!

Like everything we get involved in, I did a lot of research about soap making before I even acquired goats.  I wanted to make sure it was the right move, the right investment in time, energy and money.  As I learned about soap, I learned about skin, about butters and oils, and learned more about essential oils.  I've been using essential oils for years for fragrance.  I haven't worn over-the-counter perfume in a long time, always essential oils in a base of skin-friendly carrier oil, but none made by myself.  Now I know so much more about their qualities for nourishing the skin, improving health, cleaning, removing bacteria, mold and, yes, even viruses!  The teat dip we used on the goats was all homemade and largely essential oils in a witch hazel base.

Our own interest in a green and sustainable life style, and learning about soap making took me online where I discovered a world of #DIY beauty and health products.  Not just soap, but everything you could possibly need from cough drops to deodorant!  Looking to test the market before we were ready to make soap, I decided to make some lip balm and lotion bars from one of my favorite skin care ingredients: hemp oil.  I could see if my Farmers Market customers were interested and I'd have them for my own use!  And hemp oil is a local product: we use 'Manitoba Harvest' hemp oil in our morning smoothies as well as our skin care!  I acquired some lovely bars of natural beeswax from Manitoba's  'Hive on the Hill' and I was off-and-running in the beauty biz.  The balm and lotion bars were well received, and I was gratified that some CSA friends and other people with eczema had great luck with our all-natural products and have been return customers ever since!  And my sensitive skin was quite happy so it was all good!

As I was running out of my commercial face moisturizer, I happened to get hooked up with Diane Kidman's wonderful herb books.  Her book Beauty Gone Wild' had the recipes that really got me thinking that I could make my own!  Now, I'm not going to share her recipe here, because she works really hard and I think you should buy her book.  The e-book is $4, just four bucks and she deserves it! (And if you don't have a Kindle you can download free software so you can read any Kindle book on any type of computer.  You knew that, right?  And did you know that the Canadian blog/Facebook page Joybilee Farm lists free Kindle books everyday?)  Anyhoo, back in the summer, for a $9 bottle of organic olive oil, I got a couple of big jars of a lovely (although somewhat heavy for summer) facial moisturizer. With some olive oil left over for salad!  Yes, that's right - about $9 for two large jars of moisturizer!  One I kept refrigerated, since the cream contains no preservatives, until I had used up the first.

The time had come for more moisturizer, but this time I know so much more!  Plus, the soap making has had me acquiring different butters and oils, as I became interested in new recipes.  As I could afford it, I've added new essential oils and more exotic ingredients to my arsenal.  So, Diane's basic recipes calls for, among a few other things, a cup of olive oil and up to 32 drops of essential oils.  This time, I replaced some of the olive oil with sweet almond oil and jojoba oil - both known to be very good for the skin.  I also had, this time, rose hip seed oil and geranium oil, replacing most of the lavender essential oil I used in the first batch.  Both the rose hip oil and geranium oil are very good for mature (cough, cough) and sensitive skins!  And wow - do I love this cream!  The smell is lovely but light, the texture is a little lighter but still rich enough for winter, and it sinks in nicely!

My shower routine now starts with a gentle facial scrub of ground oatmeal, honey and a dab of goats milk (all local - love that!)  from my other favorite resource: Janice Cox's 'Natural Beauty at Home'.  The scrub is also fabulous for hands: weather-chapped, goat slobbered, chicken pecked, kitty scratched, chore-doing hands!  I've also made bath soaks, body scrubs, and soon, eye cream from this book!  A great resource.  If you're thinking of making your own, do also check out the fab-u-lous website Fresh Picked Beauty - loads of great stuff!  Another great source, not just for skin care recipes but also loads of other crafts and gardening ideas is Garden Therapy; I've also recently picked up her e-book and follow her on Pinterest too - the good stuff just keeps coming from Stevie!   It's her recipe for easy bath bombs that some of our family will be getting in their Christmas presents this year, along with a little soap, of course!  When I get to it, I'll let you know how the homemade eye cream goes!

Soapmaking Is Addictive!

Our Simple Goats Milk Soap, in the flat tray molds.
Soaps are frozen in the mold to get the lovely ivory colour
and to keep the milk proteins from scorching.

Farmer Man is calling me the 'Soapmaking Kitchen Witch'! I'm often in the kitchen, melting fats and oils, stirring big pots of goop, geared up in gloves and goggles before mixing lye, pouring out fresh soap into molds.  Our freezer is often crowded with goats milk in ice cubes trays, getting frozen for soap making.  Or, there are molds full of soap taking up space - waiting to be frozen, before being removed from the molds and cut.

I am officially hooked on soap making!  Much of my time is spent in not only making soap, but reading about the properties of various fats and oils, researching natural additives and essential oils, cruising websites and blogs concerning soap, looking at soap recipes and planning how to change them into goats milk recipes, and scrutinizing packaging and displays.  It's almost like a full-time job, without the pay check (so far)!  Of course, I also spend some time each day caring for my little goaties...and the other critters around here.  But I always seem to get back to soap.  I've subscribed to newsletters from soaping websites, I've got books here that I can pick up at any time.  We want, like the food we grow, to offer our customers a wonderful, natural product - without harmful chemicals (aside from the lye, which is potentially harmful only to me during the process of making soap).  I've been deepening my knowledge of essential oils for fragrance - no fake chemical fragrances for us!  I've been learning about the benefits of ground oatmeal, herbs and natural clays and so much more!

The original Hemp Soap, with the dark spot in the middle.
The picture doesn't show it's pale green colour.

I love all the soap I've made and tried, but my favorite so far is our hemp soap.  It's very gentle and moisturizing, lovely sudsy, and doubles as a shampoo very nicely!  I had decided to make it in a loaf mold, to distinguish it from our Simple Soap.  In the loaf mold, however, I got a funny spot in the middle, as you can see in the photo.  Now, to preserve the benefits of milk and to produce a lovely, pale color I freeze all our soap as soon as it is poured in the mold.  In cold process soap making, the molds are usually insulated to encourage heat to build up so that the soap goes through what's called a gel phase.  I'm trying to avoid that gel phase and the resulting heat; so much heat can be produced in the chemical reaction of lye with oils and fats that the milk can be scorched!  This would destroy some of the benefits to the skin of the milk as well as discolour the bars.  To this end, I mostly use flat tray molds, so that the heat doesn't build up and dissipates quickly in the freezer.  But, I didn't have enough tray molds and was trying to produce soap quickly, so I started making the hemp in a loaf mold.  Heat builds up in the middle, even in the freezer, and I get a spot in the middle that has gone through the gel phase.  Doesn't really effect the soap - it's still lovely but I didn't like the look.

The latest Hemp Soap, not frozen.  No centre spot,
but the colour is more yellow/beige.

So, I've tried different things: letting the oils cool longer before adding the lye/goats milk mix.  I've stirred the final soap longer and longer, hoping to release some of the heat before pouring it in the mold.  All, to no avail.  So, I decided to make a batch without putting it in the freezer, insulate the molds on the counter and let the stuff go through the gel phase!  Result: a bar with a different colour and texture, and no spot in the middle!  Now, I really shouldn't judge this new loaf of hemp soap.  It's just come out of the mold and needs to cure for a month or so, during which time it will change.  However, so far I don't like the colour as well - it's a bit more of a yellow/beige/green whereas my first bars were a pale, pale minty green.  The texture is a bit more coarse, it's not as smooth and creamy as the first batches.  And, of course, I haven't used it yet and won't for a number of weeks and that will be the ultimate test.  I'll draw my final conclusions when the soap comes in the shower with me!  Wow, that sounded so....scientific.....

I'm Lovin' a Soap Saver!

On the right, my well-used soap saver!

We've been testing out our soaps the very first minute we can.  No long curing has been going on here!  Anytime I've made something new....we wait the minimum time, test it with a pH strip to make sure it's safe and then into the shower it goes!  We're loving all the carefully chosen recipes, and we're certainly luxuriating in fresh, handmade soap, creamy with loads of fresh goat milk, full of natural glycerin and skin-loving butters and oils.  No dry, detergent-stripped skin around here!

We have noticed that our soaps can get a little soft sitting in the shower.  And I've become aware that that can be a 'thing' with handmade soap.  Glycerin is a natural by-product of soap making; commercial makers often remove it to sell and use elsewhere, leaving a harder bar of soap.  Many commercial soaps are actually just detergent whereas our soap is fats, oils and fresh milk, saponified with lye.  Then, when we don't let them cure for very long before trying them.....well, we have soft soap.  I've been reading, for a while, about soap bags or soap savers or scrubby bags....whatever you want to call them!  On the Web, there are mentions of them on soaping sites, crafty sites and frugal-living sites.  And I'm loving mine!  Highly recommend it!

A soap saver or soap bag serves a couple of purposes.  It is a crocheted bag (preferably handcrafted locally with natural fibres), your bar of soap goes in the bag, then between baths or showers you can hang the bag up.  Thus, you avoid leaving your soap sitting in a puddle and the soap dries out fully.  You can put your smaller pieces of soap into a bag and use them to the last little bit - which is the frugal part.  They are also excellent for exfoliation - like a wash cloth but way more sudsy and easy to handle!  I got mine from local Etsy seller Ritzys All Naturals, who sold her crocheted wares at The Global Market this summer.  (I also got awesome cotton dish clothes from her, which I've used all summer for cleaning up the goats!)  I enquired with some crafty friends, and our CSA friend Sharon made some up for me to sell with our soaps - in some beautiful pastel, multi-coloured cottons!  If you do crochet, apparently a quite easy #DIY project - Sharon whipped up a bunch just watching TV over a couple of nights!  Here's a link to a bunch of free patterns here!

We're so excited to be bringing all our wares to the Art Gallery of South Western Manitoba's 'Gala of Gifts' on December 1st.  Stay tuned for more details!  And, if you're not in the area, watch for our announcement about online shopping...soonish.......

Revving Up The Soaping!

Goats Milk, Oatmeal, Cinnamon Soap.

CSA is finished, the Global Market is finished, the gardens are largely finished.  What's left?  Making soap!  I'm getting ready to participate in some craft fairs.  I was able to make small batches of soap thru the summer, which sold nicely at the Global Market, with great feedback from customers.  One needs volume to participate in a craft show, though, so I've been soaping up a storm!  I've been aiming for a batch a day...although that hasn't always happened!

Like everything we do, we're looking to make soap as simply and naturally as possible.  No swirling, twirling, no glittering or glamming!  We're making skin-nourishing goats milk soap with no artificial colours, no artificial fragrances, no preservatives, no chemical sudsers - just natural ingredients!  We're super-fatting with fresh, fluid goats milk - no dehydrated milk powder here!  It's harder than you might think to find info, so a certain amount of experimenting is going on in the kitchen!  Farmer Man and I, and a few friends, have been washing up with some odd-looking, but still very usable soaps!

Our 'mainstay' soap is a cold process soap which we're calling our 'Simple Soap': just coconut oil, olive oil and lots of goats milk.  All ingredients that are good for your skin, and coconut oil makes a nice lather.  We'd love to keep our soap ingredients 'local', but it's hard to make good soap with just what is available: canola oil, sunflower oil and hemp oil!  We could get into rendering lard, a classic soap ingredient but...we'd need a lot and I just don't really want to get into it!  We have also made a hemp soap - very popular at the Global Market and a good pairing with our hemp lotion bar!

To keep our soaps the lightest colour possible, we are freezing the mixes as soon as they go in the mold.  The common practice, in cold process soap making, is to insulate the soap in the mold and leave it 24 hours.  During this time the soap goes through a 'gel' phase, during which the chemical process involving the fats, oils and lye is completed.  A lot of heat is generated during this phase which can scorch milk fats and darken the colour of the bar.  We can keep more of the milk solids unscathed and the colour lighter by avoiding the gel phase.  Our soap will be a little softer, and may take longer to cure, but more benefits to the skin!  We're making most of our soaps in flat tray molds, so it freezes quicker and to avoid heat build-up.  The hemp soap I've been making in a loaf mold, and have had the centre darken, meaning it was warm enough for a short time for the gel phase to start.  Still great soap - maybe we'll call it 'Hemp Heart' soap or something!

So far, we've got a good stash of our Hemp Soap, Simple Soap Unscented (great for those working in hospitals and such where fragrance is frowned on, or for people who don't want their soap to interfere with their perfume choice), Simple Soap with ground Lavender and Lavender essential oil, Simple Soap with ground chamomile and chamomile infusion, a goat milk, oatmeal and honey soap (from a recipe on the Web), a shampoo bar and a shampoo bar with Rosemary essential oil (for scalp stimulation).  Today's experiment:  a goat milk, oatmeal and cinnamon soap which I am not going to put in the freezer.  I'm making it in a loaf mold and since the ground cinnamon is going to colour the bar anyway, I decided to see what would happen if I didn't freeze it, but insulated it instead!  I'll post some pictures on our Facebook page when I take it out of the mold in a day or two!

End of the Growing Season....

Everyone enjoys the fountain each summer!

Yesterday, we could park our truck in the garage, for the first time in probably four months!  It means the season is just about finished here in Manitoba.  During growing season, the garage is 'action central', where we gather the harvest, clean, package and sort into CSA boxes or crates for Farmers Markets.  One side of the double garage is always for processing: a couple of long tables with our scales, bags, accessories and space to put down crates of to-be-weighed-and-packaged veggies.  The other side gets tables set up all around, where we lay out all the crates; on Tuesdays and Thursdays for our CSA families, Fridays and Saturdays for The Global Market.  In September, in particular, the garage is crammed with crates and crates of potatoes, onions and garlic drying and curing before being sold or stored, then it's floor is covered with all the Winter Squash we've harvested.  It's hard to walk around let alone park a vehicle!  So, when the truck can finally go back into the garage - we know things are almost finished.

There hasn't been a blog post in a while: the last CSA delivery, the last Global Market all bring a sense of 'end' to us, and we take a little break from writing and, well, talking to people.  We've hardly left the farm for a couple of weeks, just the occasional grocery shop or feed store run!  We're still busy, though, very, very busy!  Farmer Man is still doing clean up/close up.  All the potatoes have been moved to the root cellar, all the Winter Squash is in the sun room.  Anything that can be dug, plucked or pulled has been.  It has largely all been dealt with too; there are just soup beans, Jacob's Cattle, that still need to be shelled, cleaned and stored.  Farmer Man has started some tilling, to clean up some growing beds and he's been cleaning the shop, the garage, the green house and the barn.  He's gathered tomato cages and stakes, picked up hoses, organized tools and a myriad of other small chores.  Work has already started, in a small way, on winterizing the barns, cleaning and updating goat pens and chicken coops.  Those, however, are chores that can wait until the first snow fall forces him off the land.  Me, I've been cooking, baking and making soap - hoping to be ready to do some craft shows this Holiday Season!

One of our final chores, just before freezing weather sets in, is to dismantle the fountain by our patio.  It's a work of art every year - stacked stones, a deep basin of water and a pond pump.  Everyone enjoys it: not only do we enjoy it as we sit on the patio but dogs, cats, chickens, assorted wild birds and even bees and wasps stop in for a drink.  When the fountain is taken down it means that Winter is looming right around the corner.  Farmer Man has threatened a couple of times to take it apart, but I always look at the long range forecast and tell him to leave it a few more days....