Tag Archives: soap

THF wrap-up for 2018

Our 3 Acres, ,

This is the time of year when all of us sit and look back to see what we have done and how far we have come.   We had some major changes at THF and more than a few ups and downs.   Money was spent on repairing our equipment such as our fabulous and much needed trailer/wagon.  We use it to haul just about everything around the farm.  Money was made by selling our shiitakes and my new skin care products.  We added a third event to our schedule and kept our eyes open for any other potential customers.   New people were met and a wonderful friend, Bob Crane was lost.

The weather played havoc with our schedule and plans.  Too much rain at the wrong times kept us from harvesting, planting and painting.  Yes, we had more painting to do.  Ron finally moved forward on getting buildings for THF.  It was a big deal when our shed arrived.  It was Amish made and just what we needed to store our equipment.  Well remembering the time involved in painting our first tiny house, we decided to have the builder paint the shed for us.  We still have a few tweaks do to.  I want to paint green around the windows and door to break up the massive sameness.   And we desperately need more of Ron’s whimsies to hang on the building.   Especially now that it has been moved.

Yes, after all the time and effort Ron spent to have the shed set in just the right position, he decided to have it moved.   He pulled the trigger and had the same Amish man build another shed for him.  The two families we have been working with have been a huge help to us.   Ron has plans for them to build him a few other things over the next few years.   And kids are just delightful.   The second shed is bigger so we can use as for processing our products.  Cleaning and bagging the shiitakes, sorting the elderberries and drying our calendula and lavender.

Once Ron decided where he wanted this new building, he also decided this was the time to move the shed too. He did not like the current location as it got too much sun and there is no way the two fans we had installed would keep the shed cool enough to dry but not damage either our lavender or calendula. So we had two cement slabs poured. Though I fretted about our budget, it was exciting to move forward with his plans.

By the time both sheds were moved into their new spots it was late November and too late to get a coat of primer on it. Hey, I have a great idea. We need to have a painting event come spring. I am sure we will have lots of volunteers for that project

You can tell from this photo that we had one big project that didn’t get done. We had planned to mow down the proposed future site of our juneberries and get the landscape cloth rows set up. We just didn’t get to it. Too much rain, too many other things to get done and too much inference from our normal daily lives. Things like our jobs caused us to miss some wonderful THF work days.

I continued working on my calendula products, though by the time our events started I stopped making our goat’s milk soap. I had enough of that to sell in 2018. I did learn that soap making can be wonderful fun but frustrating. You will remember that my first attempt of making soap was a simple calendula soap and the bar Josi and I made turned out great. I decided to try making more but this time a double batch using larger molds. I used the on-line lye calculator which is a fabulous tool for all soap makers. It will take any recipe and allow you to increase or decrease the batch size. Or change your ingredients but always making sure you end up with a usable bar of soap. What they can not help you with is making sure you pay attention to your process. When I poured the soap into the molds, I immediately realized something was wrong. I didn’t have enough to completely fill both molds. I couldn’t figure what I had missed. While driving home from work the next day, it hit me. I had not added enough water. I used the amount from the original recipe.

That is when I learned about rebatching. That is when you chop up your not quite right soap and melt it down, adding what you need in order to fix it. That goodness I had a large crockpot to use for this.

I actually kinda like the way it turned out. But it was a lot of extra work. Especially as you cannot be sure you have fixed the problem. This was not the end of my troubles. I tried again with the same recipe but this time it was too oily. I think that was because I put the soap molds right into the insulated box I used for the goat’s milk soap. That meant the soap stayed hot much longer that it should have. So crockpot to the rescue again.

In the middle of all this I also made my first attempt at elderberry jelly. And that turned out to be a huge success. I cannot wait until we have it ready to sell. I plan to make more from the berries I have stashed in our freezer. Our elderberries bushes produced so many berries. I make elderberry tincture and syrup. We sold more than a few pounds, gave away some and froze the rest. I deliberately did this in order to have jelly to sell at the CCE Herb and Flower Fest in June 2019. That means more work between now and then as Ron has to come up with the label design. But first we have to decide on the right jar. Needs to be 4 ounces and able to go into a water bath. We are thinking that the Ball jelly jars while the right size and easy to pick up locally, will not work. Their quilted outside will not take a label easily.

Another hit we had was the pawpaw butter I made. Ron came home with a box of pawpaws from Cornell and I stumbled onto a recipe to turn them into a butter. I learned one of the best ways to cook the pawpaws too. You peel the soft fruit and then toss the whole thing in to the pot. Once it is cooked enough you run it through a fool mill to remove the seeds and any peel that is still in there. It was a solid home run from almost everyone we had try it. Now we just have to wait to have our own fruit to use. That will a few more years. I really do like being able to offer more than one nonperishable product that I can make ahead and not worry about. And both the jelly and butter would be wonderful on a toasted English muffin.

We had a huge set back with our garlic. We had planted 4 rows again in 2017 and were expecting to see another great harvest. But it was not to be. We are not quite sure what happened but we tossed out more than we salvaged and got the remaining set up for curing by hanging it from the rails in our work tent.

Once it was fully cured we moved it to the shed. That was another mistake as time got away from us and we left it there too long. We had a surprise cold spell here. And by cold I mean several days well below 32 degrees. When we finally got out to pull it in, we discovered it had frozen and then thawed. We had to toss most of it. It was very depressing.

Also depressing was the set back I had with growing calendula. I had watched a video from a farm in Maine that grows this herb and they used a bed of straw as mulch. Since we had a bale left over, I thought it would be a good idea. Yeah, it really wasn’t. We didn’t think much of it when the straw started growing in the beds, thinking we could spend some time weeding it out. Of course that didn’t happen either.

In the beginning the flowers were lovely and grew much better than Ron expected.

This is what I had come fall. You can barely see a few yellow flowers amid all the straw. Now I have to wait until spring so I can mow all the old dead stuff down and try again with more seeds and serious commitment to weed pulling. We left most of flower heads to go to seed and drop where they where. I did snag seeds from a few orange flowers to grow next year for sale. We are going to plant again next year in our old garlic rows.

We have January, February and March hash out our plans for 2019. There will be another log inoculation event, more planting, much more weeding, and painting. Lots of decisions to make and assorted mistakes too. And I will certainly collect a few more bruises. But we will have tons of fun, meet more great people and if all goes well, we will make some money in the bargain. We are all really looking forward to it.

Ginny’s been busy

Ginny Projects, , , ,

Learning all sorts of new things.  It is not as easy as saying; Hey I am going to make and sell natural skin care products. The number of decisions that have to be made are mindboggling. The how-to info is out there and that is the easy part. Well, easy enough once you decide what type of products you want to make. No matter what you want to make, there is a basic recipe for each item. Oils, butters, and wax are the baseline ingredients and the process is great, fun science; but there is a lot more involved. First you have to decide what kind oil you want to use. Each oil adds something different to your product. Then you have to decide if you want to try Infusing your oil choice with any number of herbs. That takes time. A month at least, though you can do this in just a few hours using a crockpot or double boiler. I prefer using the slow method and have my jars lined up alongside our wood stove.

And I had to get myself more organized too. Every jar needs a label and date. The only oil you can easily identify is coconut. And this only after it cools down and started to solidify again. I have calendula infused olive, coconut and sunflower oil. Lavender olive oil which I did use in making a batch of lavender soap. One jar of comfrey infused olive oil to try using in salves. And calendula infused coconut oil. Lots of things to play with. Ron added to the mix by having a friend at work who raises goats. Which is why we are making goat’s milk calendula soap.
And then there is the stuff you have to buy. You can find some of it in the grocery store and maybe can find something to use as a mold in your house, but there is so much out there now that you can be overwhelmed by the choices. I decided to go with simple loaf molds as I wanted to make bar soap. But even with that, I still have to decide what type/style of mold and what size. You also need molds or tins for lip balms, lotion bars and salves. You have to find sources for your supplies. Beeswax and lye are not easily found on store shelves. Ron found a guy on Ebay selling 8 pounds of beeswax for a good price and ordered it for me. It came in big chunks which were not going to be easy to work with.  So I melted it down, filtering through cheesecloth and poured it into smaller molds. Time consuming but it made it much easier for later projects.

So, you have made the soap and then have more decisions. How are you going to cut it into neat bars and where will you store it during the curing time? Which is at least 4 weeks. The longer your soap cures, the better. And you have to plan accordingly. This is not something you can decide on December 1st that you want to make soap as Christmas presents.
Ron made an executive decision and decided that I needed a fancy shmancy soap cutter, and I have to admit that it really does a great job. But I don’t feel the same happiness using it as I did with the cutter my friend Josi made me. With my longer loaf molds, I end up with 10 even slices. A good number to work with. As to the curing process, that issue was solved when Ron came home with two metal shelf sets. I combined all the shelves to make one unit, so now I have shelves to hold my soaps, lotion bars and assorted supplies. Time for a happy dance.

Another issue any soap maker has is keeping tracking of when the soap was sliced so you will know when it can be used. All of my soaps are the same so I cannot ID each batch by just looks. I stumbled across a suggestion of putting small stickers on one bar from each batch and have a list with sticker color and date. A simple solution to my problem is keeping a spread sheet with weekly weights of each bar.
Now you have your cured soap or lotion bars and you need to make yet another decision. How to package and label it. Again, the choices are endless. Ron pulled on his graphic designer hat and came up with a great design. We are going to have the same basic label for all of our products;  just changing it as needed. He also found a terrific company to make the stick-on labels for us. We highly recommend you check out Stickermule for any label needs. With our soap, we not only have a wrap-around label but we actually wrap the bar itself. It looks a bit more put together and will protect the soap from any bashing about.
All of this has been a real adventure for me as there is so much to learn. And it has been re-enforced that you really do need to read your recipe or directions. And pay attention. Last week I tackled lip balm. Ron wanted to get the labels ordered, but I told him to wait until I had done a couple of runs at it. So, I divided my recipe in half and got everything melted together. Then I discovered that the tubes I was planning to use for this batch did not fit properly with the tube tray I bought. They were longer and thinner. I did not want to use the tubes that came with the tray. They hold the same amount by weight, but they look under filled. Not a good selling point. Once the balm had hardened, I pulled one out to try. Major disaster. The thing was rock hard and I could not figure out why.  More oil was the obvious solution, but how did I get the recipe so wrong?  Driving to work the next day it hit me. I had misread the beeswax conversion from tablespoons to ounces and had doubled the amount needed. Glad I figured it out, but annoying nonetheless.
The second batch was much better, but I still need to figure out the best way to use the tray I have.

I already have a good recipe for lotion bars and those are something you can quickly whip together.  Bonus being they are ready to go within a few hours. The issue I have with those are getting the weight right.  Each bar needs to weigh at least 1.5 ounces.  I am using 12 individual molds and it is annoyingly difficult to put each one on my scale and then pour the hot mixture in to in.  Moving the just filled molds without spilling is tricky.  After I have made a few more dozen, I should have a solid routine down pat.

The most luxurious product I make is a calendula body cream.  It is also my problem child.  Because it is made with water it does not have the shelf life of items made with oils.  I have to add a preservative and then make it shortly before I am going sell it.  But people who have tried it, really like it.

We are really looking forward to seeing how well these products sell at the events we attend this year. Ron is still focused on the shiitakes, but having something non perishable to sell too could be a major game changer.  It is going to be a fun year.

Here I am using something I had around the house with my soap making.  Goat’s milk soap will darken if you keep it warm longer so I put the molds in a box and cover with a towel.  Murphy loves helping me out by adding her warmth to the process.   Who says cats can’t be helpful?