Soap and More Soap

Thursday morning we gathered up our supplies and went to my mother in laws so we could make soap.

The day started off pretty bad, our scale seemed to be really off and once sorting the supplies we discovered we had only half the lye we thought we did.

I pulled out our other scale and we played with them for a bit and then got to work.

One of my many lovely oil stirring assitants

We did FOUR 5lb batches and a 2.5lb batch---72 bars total!! Hoping to go to town and get more lye to knock out another 20-30lbs.

Most of the stuff I made was very common to us (Sandalwood, Jasmine, Relaxing and Dragons Blood) but one (the 2.5lb batch) was an experiment. I had bought some shreaded loofah from Bramble Berry early this spring and after sorting out the supplies I decided I wanted to make an Energy with loofah bar. It looks and smelles amazing. I am anxiously waiting to cut into it and see the loofah pieces. From the top it looks like grated peels of lemon or orange. I will post back how it turns out when we use a bar in 4-6 weeks.

A presoak of the loofah in melted oils

See the flecks of Loofah it looks beautiful!!

On Saturday after Farmers Market we went back over there to cut and stack them all the bars and since we had time we made 15lbs more.

 We did the a Mocha blend using coffee as the base with some cocoa powder blended in (hense the Mocha name), some Chai Tea, and Cucumber Melon.

That will make a total of 120 bars ready for testing on July 23.

I plan on trying some new soap for my vegan customers that will use no milk or creams and all animal free oils. I am troubled as to what scent to make it though. If you want to help decide check out our website and see all the types I can make.

Here is the first 72 bars. Notice the top right one is gelling already :)

Solar Oven Pizza

This past week we had some of the most amazing weather of the year, sun was shinning and the wind was gone. Monday I did odds and end work and mid day I realized it would have been a great time to use the Sun Oven we have if I had planned it in the morning. With the excessive winds this year I haven't had the chance. So I planned it on Tuesday.

I had some frozen dough in the freezer so I set it out to thaw, about 4hrs later it was ready.

 I did discover that my pizza stone didn't fit inside the oven so I had to use a pizza tray and a normal tray. I also decided I wanted to try and bake them together, stacked like in the real oven.

 It took 30 mins to prebake the crust, then on went the toppings---tomato sauce, pepperoni, mozzerella and on 1 pizza some spinach. I then put them back in and restacked them and set a timer for 40mins.

Perfect timing since my oven was losing sun. The one on the pizza tray was perfect, crust crisp and everything. The one on the flat tray needed to go in my oven for 10mins at 350 to crisp up.

All in all it was great!! I am going to borrow some smaller pizza stones to see how they work and if they do great we will be purchasing 2-3 and then try to build a little shelf to hold them on in the oven.

I am looking forward to trying more foods in the solar oven this summer.

If you have solar cooking experience please share some of your tips and tricks??

Garden Fresh Salad!!

It's about time!!!

Fresh from the garden, washed and spun.

Here is a veiw from the field-- ignore the weeds.



Mixed greens--
Red and Green Salad Bowl and Lolla Rossa.



We have had a really odd spring/start of summer so my salad greens are a bit behind schedule but I decided tonight I wanted one. This is the first salad of the season and my kids were a bit annoyed I didn't share with them until they saw I wasn't doing a "loaded" salad.

I really wanted to enjoy the fresh lettuce so I just picked a variety of the greens and thru some shreaded carrots on top and some homemade italian dressing and ta da my dinner.

It tasted great!!



Skills or Hobbies-- you gather new ones while on a farm

As we live here on Serenity we are slowly learning new skills that we either saw people do or heard of but never realized we would need to or want to do. One is canning or dehydrating which as the gardening season goes on I am sure I will share my adventures there. Today I want to share one of the fun hobbies I like doing and would honestly do more often if I didn't have little ones running underfoot 24/7.

Hand Crafted Soap-

Making soap is a science, you can make yours from scratch using different fats/oils you prefer or you can buy **premade bases. Either way your getting a real natural soap in its truest form. Soap is made from fats/oils (either animal or vegetable) and a lye solution. Here at Serenity we make a majority of our soap with a Goats Milk Lye Solution meaning we use goats milk as our base liquid. All fats need to be of food grade quality. We have played with many different fats here and I highly recommend either MMS Calc or SoapCalc to get you started with since you will want to make sure you have a good mix of fats and the correct amount of lye. I never make a batch of soap without running it thru a calc first. Both calcs can also help you get the properties of each fat/oil.

If your asking yourself why:

1. Generally all commercial soaps have additives that can dry out or irritate your skin, with handcrafted soaps its all 100% natural oils with no additives.
2. Most commercial soap companies also pull out all the glycerin (a byproduct from the chemical reaction) and sell it for using in other things including lotions or even your food. Doing this causes those bars to become more of a detergent then a body soap.
3. By using or making handcrafted soaps you can have a soap designed to your skin and scent preference.

One thing people are weary of is the Lye. When I first met a friend out here on her soap she had a sticker saying No Lye No Soap. You have to use lye to make your soap and while it is dangerous if misused its not if you learn and are careful. If you read any soap makers website they will tell you that "Yes we use lye, but once the lye hits the oils and the saponification happens the lye is no more." After Saponification (the chemical reactions of the fats and lye solution) you then have soap and glycerin-- soap to clean you and glycerin to moisturise.

**Be aware that some ready made soap bases can be a detergent soap also.

Reading all ingredients or talking to your soap maker is always a good idea. Go visit your local farmers market and see if you have a soap maker that is close by, they are normally more then willing to talk about the benefits and process of their soap.

Some of my favorite websites: Bramble Berry , Teach Soap, SoapQueen or MMS

Happy Soaping!!

"For the unclean person, put some ashes from the burned purification offering into a jar and pour fresh water over them." Numbers 19:17 NIV

Summer Planting and Spring Harvest Begins

Well with our last frost finally behind us we have started our summer planting in the gardens. We have just about 3 complete rows of tomatoes in the ground and will be doing a bunch of peppers in the next few days. This year I didn't start all the squash inside as last year they didn't transplant well, so this year we are just going to direct seed. We are tilling up some rows for the last time this week and soon everything will be planted. The next week promises to be a fun but busy one planting everything outside.

With it coming to that time it meant it was time to check the garlic and sure enough we have scapes growing, we chopped some up and included them in a meal with family that was visiting last weekend. With the scapes coming it means garlic will be harvested shortly. We have mustard greens just begging for me to cut them and make some eggs, since its a small harvest I think I will wait till my dear hubby is home this week-- with all his extra work away he deserves the first spring harvest. With in a few more weeks we will be getting some salads and maybe even some beets and turnips, they are coming along nicely.

Our potatoes are looking very nice also. We are experimenting this year with them. We kept some of the tiny potatoes from our last harvest last year and put them away in our pantry which is a fairly cool room all year long. Sure enough the potatoes sprouted eyes and even started vines while in there. They are now planted and look just as good as the seeds we bought. We are going to wait till after the harvest to say whether or not it is a successful experiment since we want to see if they produce good potatoes but we may be able to cut out seed potatoes soon if this works.

Next week my mother in law will be vacationing at her house close by so it will be the start of a fun summer for my kids with Grandma and a weeding partner in the garden :)

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Galatians 6:9 NIV