Adventures in Soap - Making

It's been quite a few months since my last post.  Compared with the craze of lambing, summer has been quiet and uneventful.   Our lambs nursed and grew.   In May, we brought 12 new lambs from another farm to Aries Crossing. They were all bottle fed .   As a breastfeeding advocate, I'm proud to say our breastfed lambs were bigger and healthier than their formula fed friends.  One of our additions died shortly after coming to us but the rest have been fine though slow to grow.

  

Our lambs stayed with their Mammas for many months.  These lambs were lucky. Once we have milking equipment, they won't enjoy such a long nursing period as we'll be taking a lot of the milk for production.

In July we separated the males and females and were left with some engorged Mammas.



They had to be milked to prevent mastitis and the fun began.  We hand milked for a week or so before getting a hand pump.   I got pretty good at hand milking but it is very hard to keep the milk clean when milking into a bucket.  The ewes would step in it or knock it over or just drop junk off their long fleece into the milk.  We decided this milk was not fit for consumption and we froze it.  It will hopefully become milk soap.   The hand pump puts the milk directly into a bottle which keeps it a lot cleaner.  That milk is in the freezer too.   Some we plan to pasteurize and make into cheese for ourselves.

Today, I made my first batch of soap.  We will see how it went in three weeks or so after it cures.  If it works well, I'll be making lots more of it and experimenting with different scents and such.