Recycle with Goats

I went out to feed the goats today and noticed how what a good job they have done recycling our Christmas tree.

Goats love Christmas trees. They will eat every bit of green and then strip all of the bark off. It will keep them busy for hours and it's quite nutritious.

Look how excited they are when I flip it over. MORE! It's like kids in a candy store. When they get it totally cleaned up we will use it this summer for a bon fire/weenie roast.

This is just a random picture of our barn cat that I threw in just because I love him He is about 12 years old and he hangs out with the goats in the barn when he is not out hunting. One day he came running in from the woods after I had already finished feeding, he was meowing at me to feed him, but I was crabby didn't feel very well so I told him to go earn his keep. The next day there was a huge dead rat inside my barn, right where I would have to see it. Now I go back and feed him when he asks me to.

This is just a photo that I find interesting. Not the butts, but just the fact that goats seem to segregate themselves. They prefer to hang out with and eat and sleep with goats of their own breed. On the left are Boer goats and on the right are Nubian goats. Boers are raised for meat and Nubians are more of a dairy breed although they are sometimes considered a dual purpose breed. What's more, when I had brown Nubians they hung out more with each other than with the black Nubians and the spotted ones seem to prefer other spotted goats company. I thought maybe it was a color issue but we once had a white LaMancha (goats with itty bitty ears) and no one wanted to hang out with the poor thing. We sold her so she could be with her own kind.

So next year when you need to get rid of your Christmas tree donate it to a goat farm. If you don't know of any contact your county extension agent and they can hook you up.

Marble Soap Color

I was making some soap today. Two batches that are favorites of my customers, Queen of D'Nile and Moonlit Stroll. These are two that I really enjoy making because they always turn out well. I have the color down pat and the fragrance always behaves the way I want. Of course, now that I have typed that out it is sure to fail, I may have just cursed myself. Anyway, I thought someone out there might be interested in how the marbling process works. I took a few photos and I will share them here.

This first picture is what my kitchen looks like when I am making soap. I know it is a big mess creative hot zone. Can you feel the magic?                                                          

This is my pot with all of my igredients in it; oils, milk, lye, and fragrance. At this point I have already stick blended it to force the oils and liquid to blend.

Before anyone shrieks in horror about lye, let me explain. All soaps are made with some type of fat, a liquid and lye. The differences in soaps can be not only the types of fats (did anyone see fight club?) or liquids (I use goat milk) that you use, but other things that are added. Natural soaps may have things like oatmeal or herbs of all sorts. Big manufacturers add chemicals that help make the soap cheaper to produce. Sometimes they use fats that you don't even want to know where they came from and they have to put it through a process to make it "clean" and "safe". Most store bought, big business soaps are actually detergent bars and not actually soap at all. But back to the lye, you see, every lye molecule has to have a fat molecule to join up with. The two get married and they become soap. Like married people they are no longer the single component that they once were, they have become something completely different, a unified pair you might say. They are no longer fat and lye, they have saponified and become soap. You sometimes hear horror stories about how "back in the day" great grandma's lye soap took off peoples hair or even skin. That was because they had no way to measure things as exactly (by weight) as we do now. Lye was made by dripping the rain water through wood ashes and after they butchered the hogs and rendered the fat they would put an egg in the water to see if it floated. If it floated about mid way in the barrel then they figured it was about right. Scary eh? No wonder they took peoples skin off right? Then they just kind of guessed how much fat to add to get the soap strong enough, but not too strong. Even scarier right? So that is the story about lye and why people are so terrified of the soap made from it. I will add here though that lye does need to be respected. It will take your skin off before it becomes soap. I always wear long rubber gloves and goggles.

O.k. so back to the soap making;

On the right is a portion of soap I have taken out to add some blue color.    

Now I have added some of the blue back into my main soap pot. I like to do this sometimes to have a little color to the base soap. The picture looks a little off but it really a nice soft blue.

 I pour the rest of the dark blue into the pot all over, back and forth and at different heights so that it is spread all though the soap.

Give it one stir through the middle. I want to just barely pull the color through. Over stirring here is a big mistake.

I Pour a little into each of the 4 molds to spread the color throughout. The color really does it's mixing as you pour it. There are other techniques for getting a more defined swirl but I like this effect.

Here it is in the mold and..........

Here are both batches as they set up.

Now this is what it looks like after it is cut. When it has cured for about a month I trim all of the side edges off. I just prefer it beveled for myself and I think it looks nice. Then it gets wrapped in plastic shrink wrap to hold its scent nice and strong and so that it stays clean as well, then labeling and it's ready to sell.

The joys of motherhood

Being a mom of 5 children I have heard all kinds of excuses. This morning for instance, I was sleeping soundly when my youngest (14) came into my room to get her phone. Yes, I make her bring her phone into my room at 10 p.m. and leave it there ALL NIGHT. The trials of being a teenager. It's "SO UNFAIR" to "TREAT her this way". "It's NOT like she'd be on it anyway." She doesn't see WHY she has to do this" and "NONE of her friends have to." Well, I don't believe kids should have 24 hour access to chatting with friends, so that is the rule I decided on. What causes an extra embarassment to her is that when other parents find out about it they thinks it's such a great idea.
Now, She knows that she is not supposed to wake me or her dad up to get her phone but I am usually an early riser and am up before her. However, last week I had a sleepless night and consequently slept later in the morning than usual. She did have to come in and wake me up at 8:30 to drive her to the bus stop. Now, to be fair, I made the mistake of saying,"thank you, I can't believe I slept so late." This was just the chink in my armor that she needed to fuel her excuse this morning. As I said, I was sleeping soundly when I hear this sweet little whisper, "mom, mom, mom". I roused myself as best I could and said, "what?" in my nicest, sweetest tone. In reality I think I probably sounded more like the grinch because that's exactly how I felt. I may even have been whining a little. That's when she said it. The BIG excuse, the validity of which she is still trying to convince me of. " It's 6:45" she says, (and here's the clincher)" I thought you'd want to be up." Ahhh, there it is, the joys of motherhood.

Anyone who says that God does not have a sense of humor has never been a parent to teenagers. Just about the time in your life when they quit bugging you to get up in the wee hours of the morning, you start waking up early for no apparent reason. Such is life.........

Wait, I forgot my shoes!

So, the holidays kind of wore me out I guess. I love Christmas. I find great pleasure in giving a gift that I know will fill the receiver with delight.

I also love to spend time with my family.

It was only a few days after though that I realized that I was being very absentminded. Nothing big, just annoying little things. I did mention to my family that I felt a bit out of sorts and spacey.

The following day my son-in-law asked if I was feeling better today. "Yes, I do," I said, "...but then again I did try to leave the house without my shoes today......so maybe not." Yes, I actually walked out of the house to go to the store and realized I had no shoes on! I did have socks on though for whatever that is worth. Hmmn, I guess I might be a bit tired.

While my Canadian son-in-law was celebrating his first non-white Christmas, my California daughter's boyfriend was longing to find some snow to play in. I was ready to get out of the house for a while so we bundled up and went on a quest to find him some snow. We live very near Hurricane Ridge which seemed like the logical place to go, except that they closed the sledding area this year. Apparently someone decided it was too "dangerous". So much for winter family fun in Port Angeles.

We decided our best bet was to head into the hills.

We set out for Slab Camp above Sequim. We had a long, lovely drive on roads people don't usually drive their Camry's on, but we never did hit any snow. Instead we stopped by the Dungeness River. If only it wasn't so cold. If it is going to be that cold I want snow to play in. Anyway, I took a few photos of the very cold, but beautiful river. Even though we didn't find snow it was still good to get out of the house and I definitely had my shoes on this time.