LGD Puppies!

Toppy's Seven Puppies!

We sexed the pups the other day and put colored collars on them so we can begin to tell them apart.  Toppy gave us mostly all boys this time.  I took this picture today to document their twelfth day.  They're growing so fast, and they're so chubby!  Too cute.

I am excited for their eyes and ears to open, then they'll start playing and learning so fast.  Toppy is a great mom, she feeds them whenever they start complaining, she keeps them and the dog house clean, and I noticed today that she's now placed them on the straw, as opposed to on the bare floor when they were born.

They're scheduled to be wormed the end of this week, and the Vet, our partner in this enterprise, will get his first live look at them.  I'm interested in his opinion of how they're doing since this is my first experience at raising puppies.

Boy Puppy 2 weeks old!

All in all, so far it has been a fun learning experience, and I'm looking forward to watching them grow.




Carpe Diem!

LGD - Anatolian Shepherd Puppies!

Toppy's 7 puppies!

Yesterday Toppy presented us with seven Anatolian Shepherd Puppies!  We are so excited we could just burst.  All puppies and mama appear to be doing very well.  We haven't checked on how many males and/or females there are yet, but will very soon.

What a good mama Toppy is!

These pups will be raised by Mama Toppy and Aunti Kehli in the pasture with both cows and sheep, and also chickens.   They are quite noisy already, I think we're going to have our hands full in a few weeks.

Another new adventure, more learning opportunities, life is good.  Stay tuned!

1,2,3,4,5,6,7, All good Puppies go to Heaven!

Carpe Diem!

Scuppernong Sparkle Goat Milk Soap!

Scuppernong Sparkle Goat Milk Soap!

A customer asked me several weeks ago if I had a Muscadine scented soap.  I hadn't heard of or seen that fragrance before, but she let me take a sniff of her Muscadine soap, and it was lovely.  So I set out on a search for the fragrance.  Here it is, and I do love the fragrance.

Everything seems to be turning out yellow or golden for me these days, I used green, yellow, and black oxides, and this is what I got.  Hopefully it will change a little bit as it cures.  Tomorrow I unmold and slice!

Scuppernong Sparkle Goat Milk Soap!

Okay, next day, unmolded and sliced, ready to set aside to cure for five or six weeks.  Then trimming, stamping, wrapping, labeling and pricing will occur.  Notice how the color changed during saponification and gel phase.  I was worried it was going to be yellow or golden, but, magically it turned the color I wanted.  Good surprises are great!




Carpe Diem!

Green Tea and Jasmine Goat Milk Soap!

Green Tea and Jasmine Goat Milk Soap!

I used to make a green tea soap when I first started soaping.  The recipe used Melt and Pour Glycerine soap, and the fragrance was a huge customer favorite.  I have been wanting to transfer the green tea and fragrance to a good cold process soap recipe.

Well, I finally did it today, yay me!  Right now, immediately after pouring, it looks very yellow, I'm hoping it goes back to the yellow-green color it's supposed to be, but it does smell divine!

This recipe has green tea extract and is colored with wheatgrass powder, and of course, topped with dried green tea leaves.  It should be a winner if all goes well.

Green Tea and Jasmine Goat Milk Soap!

Well, here it is, unmolded and sliced ready to place on the shelf to cure for six weeks.  I'm loving the fragrance that's coming from this batch, it's divine!  The color is a bit yellow for green tea color, but it's greener than the photos show.  Next step is to trim, stamp, and wrap, after it cures, of course!



Carpe Diem!

Lavender Blossom Goat Milk Soap!

Lavender Blossom Goat Milk Soap!

I've been making a bit of soap lately, it's one of my passions, so it's a good thing!  This one went well, I used three colors and did an in-the-pot-swirl method, I'll know tomorrow how it turned out.

It's made with my standard Goat milk Soap recipe and used two natural colors of light and darker lavender.

If you've never used goat milk soap, just give it one try, and I don't think you'll ever go back to commercial soap.  What a difference for your skin!

Lavender Blossom Goat Milk Soap!

I gotta say I'm not thrilled with the color of this soap, I need to remember the colors so I don't use them again for this purpose.  I used a lavender and a purple oxide and the lavender turned a very pale pink and the purple turned tan.  Go figure!  Like I said in a previous post, you never know how a soap is going to turn out when using new colors.  It's always a surprise.  But, and this is a big but, the Goat Milk Soap recipe is the same, and it's a luxurious soap to be sure.



Carpe Diem!

Coconut Lemongrass Goat Milk Soap!

da Lime in da Coconut Goat Milk Soap

I just made this one today, it's my reliable, creamy, wonderful goat milk soap recipe made with coconut and lime fragrance, with some green chrome oxide added to a small portion of the soap batter, then an 'in-the-pot-swirl' done just before the pour.

It smells divine, will be luxurious to use, and is so good for your skin!  It contains olive oil pomace, cocoa butter, coconut oil, apricot kernel oil, and palm oil.  Of course, the fresh goat milk is what makes this soap so wonderful.

Well, I cut this soap and something was wrong, the center of the entire loaf appeared to be wet. After doing some research, it seemed that the soap had lye pockets.  It means that some of the lye had not mixed with the oils to make soap.  I still don't know exactly why that happened, it appeared to be fully mixed when making the soap.

So, I left it to dry for a couple weeks, then decided to re-batch it to be sure no one had any bad reactions.  I proceeded to shred the entire 5 pounds, added distilled water, cooked it up on the stove top and used a stick blender to smooth out the lumps, then poured it again.  I sliced it up the following day and was pleasantly surprised at the beautiful light green color, and the luxuriously soft feel of the soap.  Some of the fragrance was cooked away during this process, but for the most part, it's a whole lot better than having to throw away an entire batch of soap.

Coconut Lemongrass Goat Milk Soap!

So, whoever asked about 'Da Lime in Da Coconut' Coconut Soap, this is the Goat Milk Soap version, and as close as I'm going to get to it for now.  Trust me, it's a much better soap for your skin than the coconut soap version!  Soap is almost always made from a combination of oils, the coconut oil soap is made from just one oil, coconut oil.  On the soap charts, coconut oil is one of the most cleansing of the oils, which means it can strip your skin unless you have excessively oily skin, in which case, it would be great for you.  Goat Milk Soap is such a moisturizing and creamy soap, and is wonderful as a gentle cleanser, even for your face.

This one will be available for purchase in a couple weeks.  Hope to see you at the Market on November 10th, and December 8th!  Or, you can email me, private message me on Facebook, or text me if you would like to order some soap or any of our skincare products.

Coconut Lemongrass Goat Milk Soap!

So, here it is, cured, trimmed up, and stamped, ready to be wrapped and labeled.  This is my first attempt at re-batching, and I'm very happy that it went so well.  I recommend the process of re-batching if your soap doesn't turn out as expected. 




Carpe Diem!

Toppy!

Toppy (left) making friends with Kehli

Toppy came to live with us about three weeks ago, a shy and timid 4-year-old pregnant Anatolian Shepherd.  She has progressed from walking on a leash around the pasture with Kehli and spending the rest of her time in a 12' x 16' pen to walking freely around the pasture with us whilst romping with Kehli and checking out the sheep and cows as she goes. 

Right now she is lounging in the sun outside her open door pen enjoying the knowledge that she can take a run (or a poop) whenever she wants.  Something else she seems to love to do is to roll in the cow and/or sheep paddies, which I find to be extremely unpleasant.  It's very hard to pet the head of a dog covered in stinky waste!  But, she is such a sweet girl that I can't resist, hopefully, she'll outgrow the need to become one with nature. 

She's expecting, as I mentioned before, and we believe her delivery time to be around Thanksgiving.  This will be our first adventure with babies, other than human ones, and we're hoping things go without a hitch.  This will be a new and challenging adventure that I am looking forward to eagerly.



Carpe Diem