Woodland Tulip Festival

I hope we didn't disappoint anyone with our no show at yesterday's (Sat. April 3rd) Woodland Tulip Festival. Vehicle troubles (couldn't get the van to start) kept us grounded for the day. Curt was able to get her up and running for today's outing at the festival. And hopefully the weather was better in Woodland, Washingtion than it was this afternoon here in Molalla, Oregon. Probably not, but it looks like next weekend is shaping up to be a little better weather than this weekend was. We'll see.

Removing Candle Melts from Packaging

I want my blog to be a place where you can get the nitty-gritty information on our products, so with that in mind let me show you how I remove our candle melts from the clamshells packaging.

Some of our candle melts are easily removed by gently pressing on the bottom of the packaging as shown in the two pictures below.

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However, some of our fragrances make the wax a little stickier, but using my method, pictured below, even those are easily to removed from the clam shell.

First I open the lid.

Next I bend the package back along the crevices of the clamshell like pictured below.

Bend 1

Bend 2

Bend 3

Now the candle melt has cracks in the wax that look like this


And now, by pressing gently on the back of the package, I easily remove the wax 1 square at a time.

Good News! You asked for it and we listened, finally;) We've taken several of our custom fragrances and added them to our regular line of fragrances. So now, most all our fragrances are available in all three of our wonderfully moisturizing body products without the extra custom fragrance charge. Our new fragrance line-up looks like this:

Goat Milk Hand & Body Cream:

• Almond Delight
• Cedar & Saffron
• Fresh Grapefruit (New)
  
• Hidden Orchid
• Japanese Plum Blossom
• Lavender Vanilla
• Lavender Amber (New)
  
• Lilac & Lilies (New)
  
• Passionfruit & Papaya
• Pineapple Cream
• Sugared Lemon
• White Gardenia
• English Lavender & Mint (New)
  
• Unscented

Goat Milk Hand Body Lotion

• Almond Delight (New) This almond replaces Almond Biscotti which has been discontinued due to low sales but it's still available as a custom fragrance.
  
• Cedar & Saffron
• Fresh Grapefruit
  
• Hidden Orchid (New)
  
• Japanese Plum Blossom (New)
  
• Lavender Vanilla (New)
  
• Lavender Amber
  
• Lilac & Lilies
  
• Passionfruit & Papaya (New)
  
• Pineapple Cream (New)
  
• Sugared Lemon
• White Gardenia (New)
  
• English Lavender & Mint
  
• Unscented

Body Silk Conditioning Skin Spray

• Almond Delight (New)
  
• Cedar & Saffron (New)
  
• Fresh Grapefruit
  
• Hidden Orchid
• Japanese Plum Blossom (New)
  
• Lavender Vanilla (New)
  
• Lavender Amber
  
• Lilac & Lilies (New)
  
• Passionfruit & Papaya (New)
  
• Pineapple Cream (New)
  
• Sugared Lemon (New)
  
• White Gardenia (New)
  
• English Lavender & Mint (New)
  
• Unscented

Sadly, Honey Patch, Baby Powder & Orange and Yellow Rose have been retired due to low sales but are still available in our custom fragrances.

New Addition to the Herd!

Meet Abraham

Last Sunday found us near Grants Pass, Oregon, at Fir Meadows Farm, picking up my daughter's long awaited new herd sire, "Abraham." Abraham is a pure bred Lamancha from excellent dairy lines. He's only two weeks old in this picture. Yep, he's a big one.


Since we have no goats yet born on our farm we also picked up a companion to keep Abraham company. Meet "Boomer," an active, cuddly, pure bred Toggenburg wether aka neutered male.





Here's Cat, the owner of Fir Meadow's Farm surrounded by some of her beautiful and friendly dairy does.



Back home in our barn, here's Abraham getting snuggled after his morning bottle



Not be left out, Boomer soon crawled up onto Justine's lap too. Fortunately there's still room, for now.



Abraham and Boomer getting use to our rowdy German Shepherds.

Making Lotion

We made lotion today and here are some pictures of the process.

Here is the "water phase" containing the distilled water, goat milk, aloe vera, and silk being heated to a minimum of 176 degrees and held for a minimum of 20 minutes. The heating process is used to kill potential bacteria and mold spores.

We use a canning kettle as our makeshift double broiler when heating the water phase.

Here's the "Oil Phase" and it contains the Abyssinian oil, Fractionated Coconut oil, Rice Bran oil and the emulsifying waxes. The oil phase is heated so that the wax melts. In this picture the mixture has not yet been heated and so you can still see the wax.

The oil and wax blend has been heated, the emulsifying wax is melted and is now added to the water/milk phase.

Using an emulsion blender we mix the oil and water phase together.

We chill the mixture in a sink of cold water, blending periodically.

While the water and oil mixture chills in the sink we measure out the silicones.

The water and oils are now cool enough to add the silicones.

Using a a hand drill and mixer attachment we mix the silicones in.



The mixture is thickened and once cooled to room temp it's ready to be fragranced and bottled.

New Soaps!

A few new soaps!


Amazon Teakwood
Primary notes of Brazilian Teakwood, fresh cut cedar, with subtle notes of
patchouli, sandalwood and moss makes this an exotic, woodsy, unique fragrance.



English Lavender & Mint
A bright, clean, refreshing blend of two favorites.
This first batch is definitely more mint than lavender. Next batch I'll up the lavender to better represent it in the blend



Star Anise & Lemon
Actually this is our "Lemon and Black Licorice" with a new name and look.


Eucalyptus & Rosemary
The blending of eucalyptus and rosemary essential oils creates this invigorating, wake-me-up soap. Especially important now that we are all trying to adjust to the current time.....(Yawn)....... change;)
This soap replaces our "Eucalyptus and Thyme" which tended to be too strong and medicinal for many people.

Vanilla Bean
Back for a limited time, classic Vanilla Bean.

Normally, by this time year, my daughter and I have baby goats to care for and does to milk, but this year we decided to take a longer break between the busy holiday season and the tiring kidding season .

Since we don't have new baby goat pics to share I thought it might be fun to look back at some of our past kids to see what they look like then and now.

February 2008
Briar Rose at a couple days of age

February 2010
Briar Rose at 2 years of age

May 2008
Rhapsody at a couple weeks of age
February 2010
Rhapsody at almost two years of age


April 2008
Goat kids

February 2010
Same group of goats as above but now two years of age