The bad and the ugly

On our blog I tend to mostly share the good things that are going on, or the projects that we completed successfully. I thought for once I would post something that we tried that did not work out, so that you all would know that not everything works out perfect here on the Farm of Hale... I know that may be shocking to some of you. We decided to try making soap, goatmilk lye soap to be exact. We thought it would be cool to try out and see how it worked. The recipe we had called for lye, goat milk, lard, honey, and oatmeal. It was actually pretty easy to go through all the steps to making it. The hardest thing was trying to find someone that sells lye.

Here is Margo stirring ingredients, it's looking good so far.



Here it is after we had mixed it all up and poured it in the soap molds, still looks pretty good at this point. It has to sit for 2 days to harden up before you take it out of the molds. Then it has to cure for 4-6 weeks


After 2 days this is what it looks like and it is even worse looking in person. We think we may have had too much lard or somehow the ingredients did not bind together or whatever. If you are an old person who reads this blog and has made soap before or any other person who has made soap before maybe you will help us out and tell us what we did wrong.


So, this little project did not turn out so well. We are going to try it one more time and see what happens. If it does not work the next time we may abandon our great soap making plans.