I have been making some sugar cube scrubs for the farm store. Tomorrow I will do two more: a rose facial scrub which is very gentle and has rose damask absolute and rose hip oil, both lovely for skin. The other will be a body scrub with Himalayan salt. The day before yesterday I did a Floral Garden sugar scrub and today, a Peppermint Mocha and Brown Sugar scrub. It smells like peppermint, chocolate coffee and has both coffee grounds and sugar as the exfoliant, but not a great deal of each. Coffee scrubs can be pretty scratchy if there is a lot of grounds in them, so this one is more lenient with the coffee. 
Coffee and chocolate both are excellent skin conditioners. Coffee, especially, diminishes inflammation and redness and even may help with cellulite. Chocolate has flavanols which are strong antioxidants and have been shown to reduce wrinkles and hydrate the skin. That is a good thing when you have wrinkles on your bum! Or wherever. There is also real vanilla extract and brown sugar in the scrub. Peppermint essential oil is a great wake up for the skin, bringing the blood to the ends of the capillaries close to the skin surface. 
These scrubby cubes have really caught on. One excellent reason is they do not require preservatives. Scrubs in jars, even if they have no water in them, still require chemical preservatives because usually one scoops out a scrub with dripping wet hands and that introduces the bacteria from the water into the scrub. These little sugar cube scrubs are single use, so that is not an issue. 
Although they are very time consuming to make, they are also always interesting. First, one must make the soap. A great soap will make a great scrub and a mediocre soap, will make a mediocre scrub. Then that great soap must be grated and melted with a little liquid. I do that in the oven. In the coffee scrub went coffee, of course, as the liquid. A large portion of oil is added. The Floral Garden scrub from yesterday used Macadamia nut oil, which is high in linoleic acid. Skin loves that! The coffee scrub is rich with coconut oil, which in itself is anti inflammatory and helps rid the skin of bacteria. Some essential oils are added for therapeutic purposes, not simply for scent. The Ylang Ylang in the Floral Garden scrub is very relaxing to the senses and peppermint enlivens and awakens. The Floral Garden would be a great bath scrub and the Peppermint Mocha would be fantastic in the morning shower.
The Fat Ewe Farm Store is set to open in two weeks or so. Better late than never! There is always so much to do on the farm that things like the store are put off until there is real spare time. This morning two men and I caught all the sheep and goats and checked them for parasites. Fortunately only a few had to be treated, but everyone was checked. Then there was time to do the scrub inbetween grocery shopping for company coming on Wednesday.
Do stop into the store in a few weeks. There will be lots of goodies along with the scrubs to entice your senses and make you smooth all over! Til then.... 

​Getting ready for the crafty event on April 8 means making new soap, lotion bars, body butters, face creams and a two new products: laundry soap and sugar cube soap scrubs. The laundry soap is made from fifty percent coconut oil and 50 percent lard, which makes a hard bar that is grated to a powder. One version also has washing soda, borax, baking soda and a little salt for hard water and the other is just the soap. The soap has no free fat and is too harsh to use on the body. This is called zero super fat, or in other words, all the fat is used in the saponification process and about 1% lye is left over. Negative 1% is not dangerous, but sure does a great job of cleaning clothing.
 
The sugar cube scrubs are single use soap cubes with added skin conditioning oil and sugar, plus some essential oils. They are a dream to rub all over the skin, the sugar gently exfoliating dead skin and the oil leaving the skin soft and smooth, while the soap also cleans. These should be fun to make.
 
I have been doing a small batch of soap every two nights. Tonight was a tallow bar with skin soothing additives and a fresh scent of White Thyme, Lavender and Cedarwood – simply divine. This soap went into some of my lovely individual molds, as it will be a very hard bar and quite hard to cut when it is ready. I always wear long rubber gloves and protective glasses or goggles when I am making soap, even though I have been doing it a long time. It only takes one very simply accident that could result in a lye burn. I have never had a real lye burn and would never like to. It eats the skin and the meat if not neutralized and flushed immediately and even then, will do damage. It is simply not worth taking a risk.
 
The event will take place in Derwent, a small town about 40 minutes from Elk Point. It is the 8th show there and is very well known, so there should be plenty of folks to sample the wares. Moose Hills Inn will also have a banner and some brochures if I get my butt into gear and design them. They do not take long to ship after that. The business cards and post cards are already here.
 
This is going to be my maybe tenth try at selling home made soap and stuff in this area. There are lots of soap makers now, but only a handful of us are really and truly natural and I think I might be the only one who does any organics at all. The labeling takes longer than making any products. I only have a black and white laser printer, so the vintage theme will work nicely with the lack of colour.
 
If you are in the area, mark the date on your calendar: April 8, Derwent. I do hope to see you there! 

Everyday is a new day on the Fat Ewe Farm. There are so many things to do, mundane chores, creative work, hobbies and crafts and planning and more. There are never enough hours in the day to do all the things I would love to accomplish and I do not have a TV to distract me, only the computer. 
I had a lovely video call with my daughter, who is studying to be a midwife in Australia in her last term. Finally, the farm has acquired internet with a new product offered by Telus. It is a hub that picks up the signal wirelessly and either connects wirelessly to a computer or through a LAN. After paying around $350 a month for phone and internet for the past two years, the $75 for the internet hub with 250G is a dream, plus the bed and breakfast guests can connect to it as well! Setting it up was no problem except the password is not easy to find. I was on hold with Telus for a long time and while waiting, kept typing in possible number. Jackpot! So I hung up and am good to go! 

The chicken coop got its spring cleaning really early today too. Usually it is still frozen solid, but we have had above zero temperatures that have completely melted the snow and thawed the coop, so I took the opportunity to give the ladies and Roo a nice fresh home, including emptying the nesting boxes and restuffing them. They are just starting to lay after a bit of a winter break. I do not supply supplemental heat or light and it is their biological timing that gives the hens a break in the midwinter. They can be forced to lay with extra light and a little heat, but their bodies get spent more quickly and they do not have a very productive long life. I prefer the natural way, even though eggs are scarce in winter. I also put a fresh bale of straw in the day house where the ducks and geese also go in inclement weather and to sleep. 

Fortunately, I was able to get my hands on about 50 pounds of beef tallow when I picked up dog scraps at the abattoir. My friend, Dale, butchers occasionally and I phoned him to see if he was using his meat grinder. He was, and agreed to run the tallow through the grinder for me, since it is so much faster to render. The roaster is really large, but it only holds about 25 pounds so I had to do the tallow in two lots. I set the oven to 350 and the rendering only took about an hour for each batch, which resulted in about 40 pounds of lovely pure tallow. This can be used for cooking, but most of it will be for soap and body butters. It would take me a long time to use that much for cooking! 

I am going in a craft fair on April 8 and am producing some small batches of soaps and body products, plus laundry soap to vend there and I will promote Moose Hills Inn as well. So, I made sea buckthorn soap yesterday, hot process and today, hemp and tallow soap. The sea buckthorn was lard based, with a little coconut oil, castor and lanolin. I love lanolin in soap and I am a sheep farmer..

The dishes got done, but the floors did not. There is housekeeping to do, and it will simply have to wait. I seized the opportunity to get the coop done and that took a couple of hours, but it is nice and fresh now. Happy chickens lay happy eggs! And that, my friends, was a day on the Fat Ewe Farm! I miss my Charka so much. The last day he was with me, Harley and the cat came for a drink too. 

Lard is plentiful where I live and easy to procure. I have a couple of friends who are butchers and when people do not claim their lard, I am often offered it. I usually accept since I can give it to the chickens and dogs as well as use it in soap after rendering it. Rendering can be done many ways. My preferred method is to use the oven on its lowest setting and let it sit there until it melts. The last batch was slightly browned..oops. It will not affect the soap quality, but does change the colour slightly to a very light amber. Lard soap is excellent for skin, easily had here and inexpesive or free. Win , win, win!
​

So, what is this experiment? I am testing additives to see exactly what their properties are in soap, in this case 100% lye soap. The first soap was made with lye, water and lard. It was a different batch of lard than the next two, which are made with the slightly browned batch. The second batch substituted pale ale for the water, and of course used lye and lard. The third batch subbed rice water, the cooking water from boiling rice. Rice water is supposed to be skin loving, but whether it will actually make any difference in soap..well that will remain to be seen. 

The soap is made cold processed. The liquid is weighed and the lye and lard as well. The lye is added to the liquid and then that is added to the lard. The lard is room temperature so technically the heat that is part of the reaction of lye and water is transferred to the lard and it melts it to a certain extent. Today, with the rice water, the exothermic reaction (the heat) was not nearly as much as with the ale yesterday, so I put the lard in the microwave for a minute to soften it. Yesterday's ale soap is still a little soft and does not want to pop out of the mold despite an hour in the freezer earlier today. So I am leaving it there for another day. The rice water soap should be ready to unmold tomorrow as it was already harder than the ale soap. 

I need a helper to put the data and photos on an easily read table. I don't know if I want to take the time to do all that. 

Anyhow, the Great Lard Soap Experiement has begun. Every day there will be a new soap created, first with different liquids and then secondly with the addition of one other oil. And lastly, two different oils and lard will make the last soaps. That is a lot of data to record. While I do not mind writing in paragraphs, doing tables has never been a forte of mine. Hmmm. Anyone out there want to volunteer? Happy Soaping! 

Soap! I have been busy making some really nice soap for the Christmas market. I guess I am a glutton for punishment, since I have tried to market the soap every year I have been here and people do buy a little, but never contact me for more. I made soap for my green lifestyle store in White Rock and people came back regularly. I don't get it. One kind lady here bought some soap and loved it so much, she made and appointment and bought 20 bars to give to her friends, with an attached business card to promote me, but neither she nor any of the recipients ever came back. That was last Christmas. 

I have made camouflage soap, and I detest that trend vehemently, thinking the locals, who are all into it in such a big way, would buy it. They didn't. I even used a fragrance oil, lightly, to scent it, because they are so hung up on Scentsy and artificial strong smells, I thought that it might appeal to them. Not. 

But I am plugging away. Some of these bars are pretty nice. They have premium ingredients in them which are purported to promote healing of red and irritated skin, or dry skin. I will make a bar specifically for Christmas too, just for fun, but it will be good soap too. And, in the next 3 years or so, until my retirement, I will keep attempting to educate the locals. They need to better understand what is in the products they use and how those very products contribute to their ill health and poor skin. Then at least I can say I attempted to make a difference and if I only reach a few, well it is the few who will share their newfound knowledge with others. And so it goes on. So, I am making soap, something I love to do. Want some?

Who does not like beeswax and honey? The combination is beautiful with the soft honey fragrance coming through the soap and a hint of beeswax. The soap is made with a Himalayan saturated salt brine. To make the brine pink salt is added to water until the water can hold no more. When there are undissolved granules on the bottom, the brine is saturated and ready to use. The benefits of salt in a bar are amazing, and not what you would think. As a matter of fact, soap can be made of salt crystals too, and they exfoliate gently while purifying the skin and when rinsed off leave the skin smooth and hydrated. 

Most brine bars are made with a high percentage of coconut oil, which strips the natural oils of skin. To compensate for that, a lot of added oil is left in the soap to coat the skin. For me, no matter how much you add after stripping, it feels to dry. So this recipe has low coconut and some really nice conditioning oils and has 20% of the weight of the bar in extra oils, to moisturize. Plus the beeswax is emollient, soothing and softening on its own. The bar has a high percentage of beeswax too, which can kill lather, just like salt can. If you have ever tried to lather soap in salt water you will know exactly what I mean. Pure coconut oil soap will lather, even in the saltiest water, which is why it is usually the base for brine soap. 

So, with gentler oils and beeswax, in order to encourage the lather, lots of honey was added. Honey promotes a lovely bubbly lather. 

Soap made with salt gets hard very, very fast. In order to pop it into molds, one has to work faster than the soap so small batches are better than large. I was not quite fast enough for the last 4 bars, but the bees molds were great. The soap was unmolded 2 hours after pouring and a regular batch of soap would take at least a 24 hour day to be solid enough to unmold. But the soap is not soap yet. It needs 24 to 48 hours to complete the lye and oil saponification reaction and then to become a better soap, it will need a long cure time. These were made for the Christmas market, so they will have at least 8 weeks. A bit longer, even a year or two, is better. However; as with anything, I will test the soap at different stages to ensure it is premium before selling it. Would you love a bar of honey and beeswax brine soap? 

Now that I have experimented with my all purpose recipe I want to give it to you to do the same.
I was attempting to create one recipe for all types of soap.
The paste alone can be used for bar soap, or with a little saturated salt brine to make a hard bar.
The paste can be diluted with glycerine for a transparent soap, but it is soft, so I would suggest not using KoH if your goal is transparent soap. I used half glycerine/half soap paste by weight.
For the cream soap, the paste was weighed and 1/4 of that weight of glycerine added and 1/4 weight of hydrosol (you could use water, or a herbal infusion or other). It was then whipped. I added some Australian red clay for slip.
For the whipped soap, well, it deflated, however, I think it might stay up with cocoa butter. I just haven't tried it yet.

This recipe is for a huge batch. Maybe cut it down to just 10% of this amount for your first shot at it. I would love to see what you can create.

Water 50% 4.586 pounds
Super Fat 0%
Macadamia Nut Oil 6.25% .575 pounds
Lard 20.91% 1.918 pounds
Beef Tallow 16.92% 1.552 pounds
Canola Oil 11.44 % 1.049 pounds
Sunflower Oil 14.42 % 1.323 pounds
Coconut Oil (92) 19.23% 1.764 Pounds
Castor Oil 10.82 % .0992 pounds

I used 60% KoH
and 40% NaoH
to the lye water I added 1 c sugar

and 8 oz of lanolin to the oil mix (as the super fat though most of lanolin is not saponified, though it would take up any unused lye)

The lye/oil/water mixture was stick blended and left. It gelled completely in the pot without heat (most likely due to the added sugar). The paste was sequestered for a month prior to the first experiment. Three months later, the paste is almost translucent white and can be melted easily to pour into molds. It is stable enough to use on its own and is a gentle, bubbly soap. It can be hand molded into pucks or balls quite easily too, without melting.

If you do try this, please send pictures! Enjoy.
​

I have read a lot of different publications and testimonies on liquid soap and cream soap. Basically liquid soap is soap that is made from the same ingredients as regular lye soap, hot processed and the resulting paste is then diluted to a liquid state. The use of two lyes, potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide supposedly makes the soap pliable instead of rock hard as in a bar soap. 

But I do not like the ingredients that most liquid soap recipes consist of, which is primarily coconut oil and olive oil. Olive oil is hard to come by, that is real unadulterated olive oil that smells like olives and is green and unrefined. Coconut oil bubbles a lit and strips the oils from the skin. It is great for a mechanic's soap or laundry soap, but not for humans, in my humble opinion. And cream soaps have huge amounts of stearic acid added to them normally. Stearic acid is found in beef tallow . The commercial stearic acid is not naturally occurring either, and it is also very drying to the skin. So you get this wonderful whipped confection that smells divine and is like putting acid on the skin. Not what I had in mind.

So, I am out to make my own style of both liquid and cream soap, possibly from the same recipe. The ingredients I used are high linoleic and linolenic acid oils, which are very good for skin, some coconut for cleansing and bubbles and locally acquired home rendered lard and tallow. That should produce a liquid soap that is gentle and that still bubbles and has a creamy lather. 

I did not have a big enough pot so I heated the oils and put about 90% in the largest pot I have, added the dual lye solution and a cup of organic sugar and stick blended it until it had achieved a pudding like consistency, then stirred in the rest of the oil. The lye solution and oils were hot and the sugar made the whole thing even hotter and it gelled in the pot. In traditional recipes the paste is always made by cooking the soap to a thick sticky glue like paste then it takes forever to dilute it. Why? I wondered why people are doing it that way and why not the easy way? The  gelled soap paste was perfect, translucent slightly amber from the organic sugar and smooth and shiny, but not goopy and sticky like a cooked paste. Perfect.And it was saponified within 24 hours, similar to the cooking method. 

It sat overnight and today I diluted some with cold tap water to see what happens. Because of the high tallow content, the soap was not clear, but a creamy white. Nice! I am going to add glycerine and whip it and see what happens. If it makes whipped soap, then perfect! If not, oh well, it does make liquid soap, a nice thick one too. I can add salt to thicken it more if I like, for a body wash. The essential oils then required are a tiny percentage of what would be used in bar soap because the soap is already finished its saponification and since it remains moist in a paste form, the evaporation is lessened greatly. Win win.

​Would you like some beautiful body wash?  

Between working, having a sick dog, dealing with the aftermath of the a flood in the bed and breakfast house and trying to keep the animals happy and healthy on the farm, I have not had much time to create things. I have been knitting and crocheting some, but not soaping. 

I had today off from work due to the teacher's convention, which I was only required to attend one of the two days, since I am half time. Tomorrow is rounding up the sheep and treating them for keds, plus a bit of hoof trimming, plus regular chores. Two young fellow are coming to help me in the afternoon, paid help. I hope they are good. But today after chores, I did the laundry and the dishes and had some time in the evening to make soap. 

I made a unique soap, with Brazilian green clay and activated charcoal, plus birch tar, camphor, black pepper, sweet birch and wintergreen essential oils in small quantities. The thing is I did it cold pressed, which means you mix the oils and lye water together and then when it is thick, called trace, it is poured into a mold. My mold is just a cardboard box with a placemat for texture, and lined with a cotton cloth. The soap did trace and I poured it then swirled it with the same batter with activated charcoal, but then it lost some oil to the cloth and the box it is molded in. I am wondering if tomorrow I might have to cook it. I would lose my pretty design and get grey soap, but the Brazilian green clay is quite grey anyhow. I will see how it is tomorrow. 

I also made hemp and olive oil soap. It is a cooked soap, called hot process, but it still takes some time to cure. It was not fully saponified when I put it in its mold, which is another cardboard box, because when I washed the pot, the soap bit my hands. That is weird.Usually a cooked soap that has gone through all the stages is already finished saponification and does not bite back. This soap will still have to take time to cure in the mold to fully saponify the oils with the lye. It is 50/50 hemp oil and lye. Hemp oil has a very green scent already so this is left au natural, no essential oils added. I plan to do a hemp aleppo, that is instead of using olive oil, using hemp oil and the fantastic laurel berry oil. 

I love hemp oil. It is the perfect food. Mixed with my greens and berry powder I hardly notice it, but it provides omega 6 nutirents that are hard to get in a diet. It is extremely conditioning for the skin and hair too. The hemp plant supplies fibre for fabric, ropes, and hempcrete, a type of concrete that has hemp fibres for strength and stability and lightness. It is one of the most useful and underused plants in the world. It was a great day for soaping. Would you like to try some of these soaps? 

I have mentioned before how difficult it is to get people here to listen to the need for change. I am trying a more subtle approach at the moment. I put a single small bar of soap in the women's washroom at work and left it there. I use it and I had noticed that others must be using it as well. On occasion, I meet another in the restroom as we wash our hands. I was told in no uncertain terms that the bar soap was dirty and there was no way the other lady would ever consider touching it even. She is incorrect there. I offered to bring in some literature that would show her the opposite is true and she said she didn't care. She wouldn't touch it. So much for subtle education, I thought. But I left the soap. Some one else was using it. 

Today a coworker asked me if the soap was mine. I told her it was but she was welcome to use it too. She then proceeded to tell me of the problems her little girl has and asked if the soap might help. I was glad to be asked and told her I thought I could help her little girl. I put together some samples for the child and for the family and will meet with the mother to look at the diet of the family too. I told her I am not a medical doctor and cannot give her medical advice but I can offer some solutions that I think could help. She was pleased. 

So, the little bar of soap may open one door, then two. And if the little child is helped, then the third door will open. My farmacy will be open for business and I, once again, will help people with their health as I did in my Green Lifestyle Store. What a pleasure to be of service and have the heart of a servant , especially when it is wanted and appreciated. I ask for little in return, only to cover my costs so I can continue doing what I love to do. And whodathunkit? One little bar of soap. Hmmm.