A Happy Happenstance

I need to talk about soap today. For two reasons.

A new, cute little soap mold I just acquired

and an enamel stock pot decorated with tiny farm animals.

You see, there are just times I wish I could experiment a bit. But I hesitate for the most part because ending up with 25 bars of a very expensive disaster can hurt both the pocketbook and the ego. Also, from time to time I run across scents that only a few people seem to want. Like Chocolate. So wouldn't 10 bars of Chocolate Passion Fruit be better than twenty-five? Most assuredly.

To that end, I recently asked my sweet husband, in a sweet way to make me a little ten-bar mold. So I could dabble more dangerously when the spirit struck me in the dead of night to blend tangerine and rosemary or sea salt with caramel and gardenia. And in my mind it just had to be easier to foist off ten bars of Bamboo Coconut Creme Truffle to unsuspecting family and friends.

Did I mention the new mold is cute? I love its petite nature. I love how easy it is to line and to carry when full. It's my new baby. It's a very cute baby.

So today I made soap using my new baby. Since I had all the stuff out anyway, I decided to make one regular batch of 25 - a remake of the "Beach" scent that sells like crazy, and a small recipe of Chocolate Lovers. I have one really devoted customer who is in love with my chocolate soap, and she bought my last four bars a couple of weeks ago. But how to proceed? Get one done and then wash everything up and start over? That sounded like more work than I wanted to do on any given day.

What I needed was another soap pot. But once a soap pot, always a soap pot. When lye has been used in a piece of cookware or Tupperware, it can't be used again for food preparation. So I sat down on the kitchen floor and started pulling out all my pots and pans looking for something I could sacrifice to the soap. Surely I had some old, slightly bent or handleless enamel or stainless steel dinosaur in the nether regions of the cabinet.

Everyone has something like that, but me.

I seem to have long since relegated those to dog water dishes, cat food pans, peacock feeders and goat treat holders. My stash of

cookware is sparse, and I use every piece but one.

I bought the small stock pot for my mother years ago. She loved the stoneware called "Heartland" and had all the pieces she could find--plates, cups, bowls, cream and sugar, spoon rest, recipe box, everything. One Christmas I found a couple of cookware pieces and scooped them up happily. She immediately loved them, displayed them, and NEVER used them. I asked her year after year why she kept them so pampered, but she could not be swayed. She used her dishes every day, but the pots were off limits. That Heartland pattern is such a part of my childhood... the squat houses, the farmer with his rake, the cow and pigs and sheep all live amid memories of Mom's chicken fried steak, bowls of homemade ice cream, and the spice cake that she made for my birthday every year. Her dishes made me happy, both the actual plates and the food that came on them. And when she died I kept the recipe box, the spoon rest that never leaves my stove top and the four-quart covered stock pot.

That pot had resided in the farthest corner of my bottom cabinet, untouched since mom's death six years ago. Pristine and shiny, I held it in my hands and contemplated its future. I could put it back where it came from, saving it for posterity and grandchildren who could not possibly feel a connection to it. Or. I could use it.

A lot.

I love making the soap. I mean I really get a kick out of it, and I cherish the blue enamel pot that is my go to piece of equipment. Even as I looked for a new candidate, that faithful kettle was full of the oils necessary to make 25 bars of Beach scented goodness. What could be so wrong about committing the Heartland pot to a life of yielding up the same? Giving it a new chance to lay down memories of a mother and grandmother and a pot she loves?

And that darn pot makes me smile. It reminds me of my mommy. So it IS my new soap pot for smaller batches. It gets to sit on the rolling kitchen cart that holds all the soap gear - where I can see it daily. And it's going to see some wonderful scent and oil combinations. We're going to have so much fun.

Two Peacocks is going to Mangum

So one day last week, I drove up to Mangum to check out a new little shop on the square. I had met the owner of "Pat's Candies and Gifts" at the Frederick show. She liked my soap and thought it might be a nice addition to her store's inventory. She also suggested that I share her floor space during the Rattlesnake weekend since I was not planning on joining the crowd of street vendors who vie for space in the hot Oklahoma sun and wind.

I was impressed with Pat's place. It was so very, very clean and bright. She makes all her own candy and pastry, eclairs, muffins, cookies, and sometimes does breads, or whatever else that strikes her fancy. There are other items on her shelves, and I am going to leave soap there after the big weekend on a consignment basis. Mangum is an artsy little community, so time will tell whether they embrace goat milk specialty soaps. Of course, I hope they can't live without it.

I've been making lots of new scents for the Mangum todo (notice I hesitate in typing the rattlesnake moniker; it's not my favorite venue). But I am going to give it a whirl this year--who knows, it might be very successful for soap sales. I intend to set up on Friday and Saturday only, April 28 and 29 inside Pat's. So if you are in the area, look for me. I'll be the one busy NOT looking at the snakes.

Some of the scents I will be featuring at Pat's and Mainstreet Mercantile in Altus are: Mango Papaya, Lilac in Bloom, Beach, Lemongrass Verbena, Dark Amber Musk, Sexy Little Things, Gardenia Mint, Twilight Woods, Warm Patchouli, Goat Milk, Oatmeal and Honey, Gardenia Mint, and Whispering Mist.

Star Wars look alike...

Most every kidding season presents us with at least one bottle baby. For the last couple of years we have been selling them immediately on Craig's List. It was just easier that way. Mixing three bottles a day and trudging down to the goat pens to feed tends to mess up the day.

But this year I am doing just that--for a little guy I call Jar-Jar Binks. He had a rough start. His mom was a first timer, pretty small at just a year old, and Jar-Jar was and is a "hoss" of kid. He was stuck in the birth canal for who knows how long when we found the poor nanny straining and pushing with all her might. Feet and nose were all we saw, and it took all of Keith's strength to pull him into the world.

The first thing we noticed was how swollen his face was, and his tongue was so enlarged it would not fit in his mouth. Although we tried every trick in the book, Jar-Jar could

not nurse or swallow. He was amazingly strong, and his instinct pushed him to nuzzle and hunt for lunch, but the nanny soon gave up worrying about him, and he gave up trying. So I milked mom to

gather the all-important colostrum, and then we tube fed him. Tubing is a tricky process which involves running a small tube down the throat directly into the stomach, and then pouring the milk into a syringe attached to the tube. Goat raisers learn how to do this for weak or cold kids, to get them on their feet so they have the strength to nurse. But Jar-Jar was not weak, and he was handful to hold and feed.

When we first tubed the little monster, we thought it would only take a day or so for the swelling to go down enough for him to feed himself. Wrong. We tubed him for four straight days. Every time I worried we might miss the stomach and pour the milk into his lungs, which would kill him within minutes. We were lucky. Jar-Jar was lucky. And the nanny had forgotten she had baby.

On day four his face sported a more regular shape, and he finally

mastered a small amount of suction. Still he couldn't curl his tongue around the baby-bottle nipple and basically lost more milk than he ingested. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I quickly learned that if I held the bottle with one hand and kept the fingers of my other hand curled around his muzzle to prevent his tongue from slipping out the side of his mouth, the milk went in him instead of on him. I now had a special needs goat kid on my hands.

But Jar-Jar has always been energetic with a strong will to live, and is extremely comical in his rush to claim me as his mom--and he kind of grew on me. So I am mixing bottles, lots of bottles because he is growing by leaps and bounds, and I'm hoping his natural instinct for grazing will soon kick in. But he has to learn to manage that tongue--this time on his own.

Sometime you get what you wish for...

Things have been busy here at the farm lately. The baby goats are mostly here, and that can be compared to a one-armed paper hanger with a contract to redo Graceland. And squeezed in with birthing goats, and feeding goats, and marking baby goats, and milking goats, I needed to restock the soap stores. I sold a ton of product at the Frederick Oyster Festival in February. I mean a lot! and it takes 30 days to cure the new batches, and half the time I had a kettle of soap going while I kept a cold and weak kid warming under foot. You get the picture, right?

Well anyway, you can see why I was wishing for a little time to update the blog and lay around doing absolutely nothing. Trouble with that plan was not specifying the terms of said Rest and Relaxation. I did not consider food poisoning as a viable means to an end. But what is that old saying, Life happens when you are busy making other plans? I was busy making plans to work all day at the Town Hall on Friday (it was the 1st and that is one busy day). And I was going to a party on Saturday to taste chocolate. Yep, chocolate tasting. I had to miss a bunch of cool ladies in a room full of chocolate arranged in all sorts of conglomerations, and I can now only fantasize about the spoons, marshmallows, and strawberries we would have used as scoops. Can you feel my pain? Literally, I hope not, because the two days I spent laying around incapable of making plans were not pretty.

A quick note: I am not sick often. I don't know how to play that game. And another thing, I feel incredibly guilty when I am ill. Things I should be taking care of are having to be done by someone else. That does not make me happy. I say again, that does NOT make me happy. Nuff said. Pity party over.

So to catch up because I have been sorely lacking in updates lately: I have wonderful new batches of soap mostly ready. Lemongrass Verbena, Beach(made with Dead Sea Salt), Gardenia Mint, Mango Papaya, Sexy Little Things and Whispering Mist(Victoria Secrets scents), Oatmeal and Honey, Dark Amber Musk, Lilacs in Bloom, Warm Patchouli, and Twilight Woods. I am making plans to go to the Mangum Rattlesnake thing this month, maybe. That requires some working up to in my opinion. Anything with snake in the name, one has to think about twice.

We have a set of new baby chickens that need to be taken care of. We ordered 42, and I chose the "Easter Egg Chicken" that lays green and blue eggs. Can't wait to see my first of those--six months from now.

The peacocks ate all the begonias I planted recently. They left the Verbena, but ate the Basil, they also left the Rosemary alone. I will replant Verbena where the begonias were because I love the peacocks more than the flowers. If I have to, I will buy basil.

We need rain. Dear Lord, I ask that You send us some rain. Amen.

Pretty Soap Pictures

Since the first of the year I have been trying to restock the depleted soap inventory. I had a lot, or I thought I had a lot--in my mind I had a lot, and it is mostly gone. I am encouraged by the sales, although I wonder if the boon times for special soaps might be the fall and the Christmas season.

Time will tell.

At any rate, I have ten new batches curing, and most will be ready by Valentine's Day. My "Twilight" based soaps turned out well--Edward's Touch, Bella's Kiss, and Jacob's Desire smell and look really cool. Keith suggested I put glitter in the Edward soap, but that didn't sound all that safe. He also suggested I put dog hair in the Jacob soap. Perhaps, I might have to stop entertaining proposals from the peanut gallery?

Some other new scents include: Cherry Almond, Whispering Mist, Mystery and Musk, Secret Crush, Pure and Simple with Oatmeal, Lavender Basil, and Field of Flowers. My house smells just amazing.

The new scents will be at Dora Lou's soon, or they can be mailed...just e-mail me.

is it January already?

What happened to Christmas? and all those hours I spent getting ready? and the carols, and the ridiculously sappy Christmas movies on the Hallmark channel? and the wonderfully full house stocked with grandchildren and children who live in other states, their presents and their laughter and their dirty socks?

In a clique: come and gone.

The tree is down, and the ornaments are packed up for another year. The freezer is (almost) empty of goodies. Most of my soap was purchased for the holidays. And what is left, what is always left, are memories--family growing, sharing, loving, and parting until next time. What is left is the next day and the next.

He Has A Lot of Names

It has been a busy season.

And I am sure everyone is saying the same thing because it is THE season, after all. I want to make sure that I get a list up of the soap varieties I have available now--and I will get to that soon enough. But I also wanted to write a bit about the newest menagerie member here at the farm.

The baby donkey was born last week, and I was so anticipating a little paint foal. The jenny is a standard gray donkey with the white under belly and the jack is a paint, so we were hoping for some type of color on the little newbie. WRONG assumption.

Nature is never predictable.

We got black. Seriously, how can something like happen? Genetics are not my thing, but I would have bet money in Vegas there would be one spot on the foal somewhere. But there you have him, black from top to bottom except for the signature white muzzle. And cute as the dickens.

His hair is as soft as duck down, and his ears have a mind of their own at times because controlling something that big takes a little time to figure out. Mycah thought a good name might be Nestor (like the Christmas story animal--Nestor the long-earred donkey). Keith likes to call him twenty-one...Come on now, you can guess, right? Because he is a "black jack." There's that Vegas connection again.

And me, I've given it some time, wanting his name to come with his personality. I've spent a lot of time with him this week, teaching him that neck rubbing and petting feel really nice. He learns fast, too, because he now acts more like a dog than a donkey. I find myself calling him "Little Man" or "Rowdy" a lot, nothing else comes as natural as those names to me. So the new resident will just have to go with the flow and answer to whatever is thrown at him right now. As long as it comes with a neck rub, I don't see him minding at all.