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 become 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 soap making, 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! ~Arielle~

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

Some soap molds stacked to dry.

With over two hundred soap molds in my stock, it can be a lengthy process to clean all of them. In fact, many facets of the soapmaking process are made more complicated by the use of these detailed soap molds. It takes longer to set out all the molds for the pouring process of the soapmaking. It takes longer, and is trickier, to pour the soap into the molds, since each individual soap mold cavity must be carefully filled.

Pouring Soap

This limits the amount of soap I can make at one time, since it is necessary for me to be able to get all the goat milk soap poured into the molds before the soap becomes too thick. The molds take up a singnificant amount of storage place. They are relativiely expensive to invest in. With these factors in mind, most soapmakers deem it too much work to produce soap for sale using these molds. I, however, think that the beautiful goat milk soap resulting from these molds is well worth the extra work! I can get a bar of plain old square, retangular, round, or oval soap anyday — maybe even natural soap. But how often can I find an all-natural, goat milk soap bar that is as beautiful to look at as it is nourishing to use? I want to be able to offer such a product to my customers, even it if means a bit more work and time for me, and these molds are the perfect tool to help me do that.

Molds such as this one produce the beautiful, detailed designs of Garland Goat Soap of Maine!

By the way, do you have a particular design you’d like to see in our goat milk soaps? Please offer your suggestions…I’m delighted to hear what you’d like so that I may be able to suppply it for you!

To superfat soap is to leave unsaponified oils in the final bars for the mildest soap. Unsaponified oils do not form compounds with the other soapmaking components but, instead, remain in their original form in the bar as emollient ingredients.

The percentage of sodium hydroxide in a soap formula is carefully calculated according to the degree of saponification desired. (Remember, saponification is the process whereby the oil molecules and sodium hydroxides molecules mix to form the new substance — soap.) When enough sodium hydroxide is used to supply all of the fatty acids with sodium hydroxide mates, the soap is considered fully saponified. No discount is taken from the percentage of sodium hydroxide required for complete saponification. This fully saponified soap does not contain excess oils. By using less sodium hydroxide than is required for a complete saponification, however, fat and oil molecules run out of lye mates. The excess oil remains in the final bar of soap as a soothing moisturizer. This milder soap is called a superfatted soap — a soap provided with excess fat and oil to make it more moisturizing.

Nearly all bath soaps clean, but the degree of saponification determines how gently or how harshly they do their jobs. An excess of sodium hydroxide not only can strip the skin of dirt and excess oils, but it can take away important natural oils as well. People with dry skin are especially affected by the strip-clean. When emollient fats and oils are added to soap as superfatting ingredients, they lay a hydrophobic film on the skin’s surface that softens the skin by holding in internal moisture.

So by superfatting our goat milk soap, we are providing our skin with a milder, gentler, and more moisturizing skin-care experience!

In cold process soapmaking, the method I use to make our goat milk soap bars, an acid and a base must be combined to produce soap. It is the reaction that occurs between the acid and base which forms soap. The acid is the oil, whether a neutral oil or a pure fatty acid. The base must be the sodium hydroxide, for fats and oils cannot be converted into soap without it. As the sodium hydroxide and the oils are combined together, the process of saponification occurs as the triglycerides of the oils break down into fatty acids  that react with the sodium ions of the base lye solution to create a whole new product – SOAP!

The proportion of sodium hydroxide to oils in a soap recipe affects how they react…and we use a discounted proportion of sodium hydroxide in order to produce a “superfatted” bar of soap – an extra mild, moisturizing soap. I will share more on what this means in the next blog post. For now, though, you can understand how our soap is made with sodium hydroxide yet contains no chemicals and is very mild and gentle!

The gentle cleansing and moisturizing properties of the oils used in Garland Goat Soaps make them ideal for baby's tender skin.

Palm oil is another important oil for use in a natural bar soap. A gentle cleanser and moisturizer, palm oil contributes to lasting hardness in a bar of soap. Unlike coconut oil, however, it will not cause the bar of soap to become brittle, so when these two types of oils are combined together, the resulting soap lasts a long time without becoming brittle and cracked. Palm Oil is rich in palmitic acid, vitamin E, vitamin K and magnesium and is considered to be a natural source of anti-oxidant.

Last but not least, Vitamin E oil completes the well-rounded selection of oils in Garland Goat Soap of Maine’s base soap recipes. Vitamin E oil is extremely emollient, and deeply moisturizing. Because of it’s make up, it does not saponify in the soapmaking process (in other words, it does not react with sodium hydroxide to make soap, but rather remains in it’s pure form as an unsaponified oil) and acts as a natural preservative in the soap.

Is your skin needing a lift? A bar of natural soap chock full of skin-nurishing oils, coupled with the special luxeries of goat milk, will give your skin just what it needs! Check out your options here.

There are all sorts of oils available for soapmakers to use. Some are commonplace, some exotic. Olive oil is one of the key oils I use in Garland Goat Soap. True, it’s rather expensive to use in large quantities, but it is extremely valuable for skin care. It helps promote a sooth, radiant completion, maintain the elasticity of the skin, heal dry, brittle nails, and soften cuticles. Olive oil performs these many functions due, in part, to the fact that it is a very good moisturizer because it attracts external moisture, holds that moisture close to the skin, and forms a breathable film to prevent the loss of the skin’s internal moisture.

Olive oil creates a superiour soap!

Unlike so many other substances used for this purpose, olive oil does not block the natural functions of the skin while performing this task. The skin is able to continue sweating, releasing sebum, and shedding dead skin cells, all necessary functions for maintaining healthy, vibrant skin. Olive oil is high in antioxidants, including vitamin E. Antioxidants are nutritional powerhouses that protect against age-accelerating free radicals. Thus, including olive oil in soap helps to protect against those damaging free radicals, as well as helping to slow aging signs such as fine lines and wrinkles. In soap, olive oil is a gentle and thorough cleanser. You might say that, as a natural soapmaking ingredient, olive oil is “worth its weight in gold!”

I got a shipment of soapmaking supplies in today, including  olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oil, some of the major ingredients I use in my soap. I wonder how many people realize what oils in soap do – or not do – for their skin. When first experimenting with soap making, I followed a simple recipe that used primarily vegetable shortening as the oil (fat), with a smattering of olive oil. It was certainly a cheap option for producing soap…and it worked for the time being, but as I began to develope my soap recipes, I began to look into other oils that would provide complete care for the skin, from moisturizing to rejuvanting skin cells, from gently cleaning baby’s face to aiding mature skin types.

After all, oils are the primary components of a natural soap bar, composing approximately sixty-five percent of the ingredients of bar soap. It would make sense then, that the type and quality of oil used in the soap drastically effects how that soap works for your skin, for the essential nature of any soap is directly related to the oils within it. The oils used in soap affect both the physical nature of the soap bar (feel, texture, hardness, etc.) and the skin-care properties of the bar (moisturizing, softening, protecting, etc.) Too much of one oil can create a bar of soap that is hard to the point of being brittle and cracking. Too much of another type of oil will produce soap that is soft, sticky, and quickly melts away in the soap dish.

Some oils are ultra-moisturizing for the skin, yet will spoil in a natural bar of soap like ours (since we don’t use the often harmful chemical preservatives found in many commercial soap) unless used in the correct proportions. Other oils will leave a greasy film on the surface of the skin. It was important, than, that I used the right kind of oils in the right proportions to get just the perfect bar of soap! I also wanted to use oils that would compliment and enhance the qualities of goat milk in my soap. In the next blog, I’ll begin to look at the oils I did choose, and why I chose them. Right now, it’s time to go get that oil stored away!

"Showgirl" produces some of the excellant milk that goes into Garland Goat Soap bars.

We’ve looked at some of the reason’s goat milk is a valuable addition to your skin-care. Perhaps this has raised a question for some of you: Why do we use goats milk in our natural soap bars, rather than cows milk? Does it make a difference? Well, as a matter of fact, it does! Although all milk, to some degree, has good skin-care qualities, goat milk is especially rich, full of nutrients for your skin.

The composition of goat milk differs from that of cow milk. Goat milk is higher than cow milk in vitamins A (helps prevent aging effects in your skin, brown spots, wrinkles, and dryness), B1 (thiamin), B12, calcium (helps clear blemished skin and revitalizes lifeless, tired-looking skin), iron, niacin, and phosphorus. Compared to cow milk, goat milk is higher in small and medium chain fatty acids (which richly moisturize your skin), including caprylic acid which helps our soap to clean without drying out the skin.

All milk contains certain amounts of natural emollients, vitamins and triglycerides that moisturize the skin. However, goat milk has a unique protein structure that enables higher absorption of the milk’s natural emollients. And of course, the higher the absorption level of the emollients, the more effective the moisturizing properties of the soap are! So while cow’s milk may also be good for your skin, goat’s milk definitely has the cutting edge in value for a great bar of handcrafted natural soap!

Time for a walk!

Four young ladies spent the past week with me for the opportunity to experience first hand taking care of all the goat kids and pitching in with the milking chores. Jessica, Julia, Sarah, and Hannah worked willingly and proved an excellent help…from bottle-feeding the kids, to milking the does, from washing soap molds to wrapping and labeling soap.

The Girls and Kids

On their last day here, the balmy temperatures and sunny blue skies beckoned us all to spend the day outdoors, and we unanimously agreed it was the perfect day to wash all the goats. Every spring, with the arrival of moderate weather, we give all our goats a thorough bath to rid them of their winter fuzz and dust. Not only is it a satisfying feeling to see them resplendent in their shinning clean coats, it is also an excellent way to avoid potential skin and hair problems in our goat herd.

Jess and Julia washing "Tatty."

For some years before we made our own soap, we would go searching at our local feed stores for animal shampoos that would thoroughly clean our goats, without the use of multiple chemicals and harsh detergents. When we did find a shampoo that fit the bill, it was often beyond our budget. With the creation of our own goat milk bar soap, however,our shampoo search was over! I quickly discovered a simple way to turn the goat milk soap into a shampoo that works wonderfully on both our goats and our dogs, leaving their coats shinning and sleek, and their skin smooth and supple.

Lots of soap suds = clean goats!

Perhaps you also have animals you’d like to treat to a spring bath. Here’s my Animal Shampoo Recipe in case you’re interested in trying it:

Grate 1 bar of Garland Goat Soap, any scent (my favorites are lemongrass, rosemary or tea tree for the animal shampoo) into fine shavings.

Add 2 cups of boiling water to the grated soap and mix thoroughly with a whisk to dissolve the soap shavings. Allow to cool before using. Enjoy!

At first, this shampoo will be quite liquidy, but will thicken as it cools. I usually mix it up right before I need it. Let me know how this shampoo works for your pets!