May 5th, our very temperamental  dairy goat Touche, gave birth to triplets. They were born in our pasture in the early afternoon on a gorgeous day. Touche dropped her kids with ease and the assistance of my sister-in-law, Kathryn.  The first was colored like her half sister, Ellie. The second was shiny black with white spots on her ears and a pronounced overbite. The last kid was the biggest and mostly white with brown markings. We had to help them at first with nursing, but they seemed to catch on real quick!! They have all thrived in the past months, they love being in the pasture.

In fact, they love being in the pasture so much they were nearly impossible to contain while still very young. They never seemed to plan their escapes on purpose, but somehow they always managed to end up on the greener side of the fence. Straining their necks through the open boards around their pen to reach some lush looking weeds, they would innocently push right through the boards and end up in the pasture! They would climb up on the fence, looking at the sky above and -ooops!!- the slim boards would slip right out of place and they were in the pasture once again. We were never able to make the fence completely ‘kid-proof’, so we became quite used to hearing my little brothers remark, “Oh,the kids are out of the pen!” Someone would then walk out (rushing not being necessary since they were in the pasture and therefore content to stay put) and recapture the vagabond doelings.

Now, they are contained (in the pasture) within an electric fence that they dare not prove, unless of course, it’s off!

Touche continues to give milk for our all natural goat milk  soap. It is the only generous thing she does, for the rest of her days are spent bossing around Ellie. We love her dearly, even though her personality can be a bit interesting at times! We know that God put it in goats to have a very firm sense of order among themselves. Touche does an excellent job living up to her calling as Queen of the goats here at Little Valley Farm!

Ellie is enjoying the sun!

Until next time,

The Moores at Garland Goat Soap of Vermont

With Arielle helping Greg with his piano business, plus growing a baby, she found she was overwhelmed and asked us if we would consider taking over this business.  After prayerful consideration, we felt the Lord leading us to take on Garland Goat Soap.  We’ve changed the name to Garland Goat Soap of Vermont, LLC but have kept the same wonderful ingredients that make the soap wholesome and natural.  We will continue to use only essential oils and over time will include some of our own honey in the soap!

Many BIG changes have directly impacted Garland Goat Soap!

The first inkling of change began in May of last year. At that time, a fine young man by the name of Greg Moore, and I began a courtship, desiring to get to know each other with the intention of marriage. We had met two months earlier at a friends’ wedding. Greg’s family resided in a lovely rural Vermont setting, while I and my family lived a seven hour trek away in Maine’s country-side. Greg and I both made that trip multiple times as we visited back and forth and our relationship deepened.  Change in both of our lives was slowly but surely marching on…

In-between our visits and lengthy phone conversations, I continued to run my business, Garland Goat Soap of Maine, while Greg worked at his own business, Little Valley Piano Service. Greg, an RPT (Registered Piano Technician), started his own piano technician service just out of high school, and built up a steady clientele over the intervening years. Amongst the many subjects we discussed, we sometimes enjoyed “business talk,” sharing our ideas and experiences with our businesses.

Greg helped me sell Garland Goat Soap at the Common Ground Fair in Maine.

August 18th, 2009, marked another wonderful change for us! Greg asked me to become his wife; my reply was a delighted “YES!!!!” We began planning for an October 31st, 2009 wedding.

Delighted to be ENGAGED!

Time flew rapidly by, and October 31st arrived, bringing with it another huge change in our lives…the commencement of our lives as husband and wife!!! With great joy and thanksgiving to the Lord, Who has lead us change by change, we embarked on our married life.

Mr. and Mrs. Greg Moore

We settled comfortably in our cozy apartment in a quaint Vermont town. Greg’s business proved quite busy with the additional work from the purchase of a retiring piano technician’s business. Garland Goat Soap had not been getting much attention; my time no longer was poured into that business, but into my wonderful husband! I wanted to be available to work together with him in Little Valley Piano Service.

More change was just around the corner for us. We discovered, with delight, that we were expecting our first child! With this blessing on the way, we realized it was time to think about passing Garland Goat Soap on, freeing me up for other responsibilities.

The perfect solution came up when Greg’s family expressed interest in taking over Garland Goat Soap. Greg and Linda Moore, and their eight children still at home, were eager and apt at learning how to produce, package, and ship Garland Goat Soap’s all natural goat milk soap. I was so delighted with their enthusiasm as I transferred more and more of the business responsibilities over to them! Under their work, Garland Goat Soap of Maine has beome Garland Goat Soap of Vermont.

It’s been a pleasure to provide gentle, completely all-natural handcrafted goat milk soap to all of my customers. I am so thankful for the years of opportunity I had to research soapmaking, create thousands of bars of soap, ship orders, run my business, keep in touch with customers, and much more. However, much as I enjoyed the years of running Garland Goat Soap, I am equally glad to pass it on now, and move into another stage of my life as wife and helper to the most wonderful man in the world, and soon mother to our little one. I am eager to see how Garland Goat Soap of Vermont will blossom under the diligent, hard work of the Moores, and am confident that they will do a wonderful job with it!

And now may I introduce the new OWNERS and MANAGERS of GARLAND GOAT SOAP OF VERMONT:

Greg & Linda Moore

Pamela, Nathaniel, Emily, Caleb, Hannah, Joshua, Matthew, and Daniel

In the beginnings of Garland Goat Soap of Maine, I handcrafted all our soap right in our kitchen, one batch at a time. After many hours of soapmaking in the kitchen, producing thousands of bars of soap, I had developed as system that was as efficient and streamlined as possible under the circumstances. More recently, I have set up a separate soapmaking room in the spare area of the basement. This has been a valuable upgrade, allowing much more efficient production of my soap. It’s also given me the opportunity to “test run” the setup and based on those observations, plan for the new soapmaking room.

It’s not the goal of Garland Goat Soap to become a mass manufacture of soap; we will always carefully handcraft our soap in small batches with all-natural goodness. However, the new soap room will provide an easier way for me to efficiently produce soap, giving me more time to work on new types of soap and all-natural goat milk skin care items! Of course, no matter how hard we work, we can’t build our new house…and the new soap room…instantaneously, so I look forward to it in the future. In the meantime, I am content to keep on working in my little soap room, carefully handcrafting soap one bar at a time!

Coconut oil is also an essential component of Garland Goat Soap. Coconut oil is obtained from copra, which is dried coconut meat. It provides many benefits to a natural bar soap!

Coconut oil creates a hard bar of soap with fluffy lather.

When used in the right proportion, coconut oil creates a good, hard bar of soap that won’t just “melt away” in your soap dish. It also contributes generous, fluffy lather for a squeaky clean feeling. More than that, though, coconut oil is an ideal skin-care oil! Because coconut oil’s molecules are small, they are easily absorbed into skin, making it the perfect moisturizer for dry or rough skin.

It helps protect your skin from the aging effects of free radicals.  It can help to keep the skin from developing liver spots, and other blemishes caused by aging and over exposure to sunlight.  When coconut oil is absorbed into the skin and connective tissues, it helps to reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by working to keep connective tissues strong and supple. The oil is absorbed into cell structure of the skins connective tissues, limiting the damage excessive sun exposure can cause. Coconut oil will aid in exfoliating the outer layer of dead skin cells, making the skin smoother.

Coconut oil helps prevent aging in your skin!

Antiseptic fatty acids in coconut oil help to prevent fungal and bacterial infections in the skin to a certain extent when it is used in skin-care. Because of these qualities, coconut oil also helps in treating various skin problems including psoriasis, dermatitis, eczema and other skin infections. I consider it indispensable in my soap recipes!

Last year, my family and I moved from our small, lovely farm in Connecticut to the beautiful, rural farming community of Garland, Maine. It has always been our desire to have more land for our farming pursuits, and last year we purchased twenty-five acres of beautiful farm land here in Garland. We love it here! While we work together to build our home, we are renting a house just a few miles away from our property, complete with a lovely barn for our goats! It had been a disappointment for me to leave behind our small but very tidy, efficient, and snug goat barn when we moved, so I was especially delighted with this barn for our goats!

It is a very new building in excellent condition, originally build as a horse barn with five deluxe, large box stalls opening into several different paddocks. We easily converted one of these stalls into a milk room, and two others into snug, cozy stalls for our little herd of goats. It hasn’t taken long for the goats to adjust, and they are thoroughly enjoying their roomy box stalls and large pasture. That’s a good thing, because in this pleasant environment, they will continue to produce lots of the wonderful, creamy milk that goes into all our soap!

]]> http://garlandgoatsoap.com/soap-news/goat-milk-soap/the-home-of-garland-goat-soap/feed 0 http://garlandgoatsoap.com/soap-news/history/the-story-of-garland-goat-soap-of-maine http://garlandgoatsoap.com/soap-news/history/the-story-of-garland-goat-soap-of-maine#comments Mon, 23 Mar 2009 15:00:26 +0000 Moore family http://garlandgoatsoap.com/soap-news/?p=7

Welcome to Garland Goat Soap’s Blog, where you can keep up to date on the happenings at Garland Goat Soap of Maine! The roots of Garland Goat Soap go back about nine years ago, when as a twelve year old, I had the opportunity to observe and help a friend make goat milk soap. My family had a small homestead/farm and enjoyed gardening, canning, cheesemaking, baking our own bread, sewing, growing fruit trees and berries, raising livestock, building, and in general producing as many of our own needs naturally off our small bit of land as possible. To me, soapmaking seemed like a natural — and fascinating — extension of these activities. Besides, we had our own herd of lovely dairy goats, and were always excited about new ways to utilize their wonderful milk. So, soon after that initial soapmaking experience with our friend, we took the plunge and tried mixing up a batch of goat milk soap ourselves. It was as complete disaster! The resulting bars were an oily, gloppy, — and caustic — mess!

However, I was still fascinated with the process of soapmaking, and procured some books that gave me more information on the details of soapmaking. Armed with a deeper knowledge, I again attempted to make soap, careful to be more precise with measurements and temperatures in the process, and this time produced a usable bar of pure, natural goat milk soap that delighted my family and I. Encouraged, I continued to produce soap for my family, constantly expanding my knowledge of the art and chemistry of natural soapmaking by research and experimentation. Several years, extensive research, and many batches of soap later, I had created my own recipe of natural soap, a perfect combination of my goats’ pure milk and luscious oils to produce creamy, long-lasting, mild and cleansing soap.

The soap worked so well for us! It was so soothing and healing and helped our dry, cracked hands, often exposed to the harsh elements of farming, become soft and smooth. We frequently shared soap with friends as a gift, and they were equally delighted with it! It was several years ago that I officially started selling soap, first to local stores and individuals, and thus Garland Goat Soap of Maine was founded. From there, as they say, the rest is history! Even as the business has grown, I continue to love handcrafting the goat milk soap in small batches, and continue to use only natural and pure ingredients in each of our expanding varieties of soap. After all, I first set out to share my goat milk soap because of its pure, natural goodness, and that’s something that won’t change!