Bone Marrow Soap

This soap making thing...my learning curve has tuned into more of a Tilt-O-Whirl ride with one of the really scary carnies at the control. You know the one I mean. Tattoos on each finger that spell out "wicked boy", Elvis hair from the Valium- crushed into- his- peanut- butter- sandwich days and of course the carnie would be wearing a Pink Floyd T-shirt but Floyd would be spelled "Floid" because the T-shirt was made by a friend of his. Yeah that is what my newest batch of soap looks like.

I tried the PVC pipe trick to make round bars. That part went OK.

Why thank you. I love the table too. Son Jason made it for me
for Christmas last year
 It seats about 30 as long as folks don't mind lap sitters.

 It was the coloring past that went AWOL. My intent was swirls. Instead I got this,

Can anyone tell me the number for 911 ?

Charming huh ? Like The bruised leg of a gangster that has been at the bottom of Lake Michigan for 3 months. It was suppossed to look beautiful and elegant like this

http://shop.beekman1802.com/images/1230395722606-2104052638.gif  (Oh I love those Beekman boys)

So the hardest part of this deal is...how to price it ? Or better yet what shall I name this batch of soap. "Ecchymotic Essence ?" or "Purple Repugnance ?" And shall I cut it across the grain or with the vein ? I've said it before and I'll say it again...(in a deep crop sharers voice) "No-body knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows the sorrrrrowwww. " Yeah, I hear ya, maybe I shouldn't have left that great paying night job.

Medium Raw Please

            Keith brings in our herd for evening milking

They told us if we didn't stop selling raw milk they would stop buying our milk for the conventional market.  But we didn't listen. They told us we would never find enough people to buy raw milk and we'd be out of business in a month. We didn't listen. They told us they would not license us as a Grade A dairy anymore even though we'd have good inspections the last 11 years. We said fine. We'll still follow the rules just for kicks and giggles and because we believe in a good milk product. They told us people would not drive ALL THE WAY to our farm for raw milk but our customers didn't listen. They told us we'd be dumping most of our milk. Well, we do dump quite a bit of it, right into the trough for our feeder pigs.

 They look fabulous and taste scrumptious. We thought we would have to sell half our dairy herd. We've sold only five cows to four wonderful homesteads. (Yes, the Scholte family was brave enough to take TWO ) We're thinking we might need to keep more than we originally planned in order to meet the growing needs of our customers.

Keith helps our cow Pam adjust to her new home

                                               at Epiphany Farms in Downs Illinois

Supply and demand is working out very well here. Except for those days we forget to get milk for ourselves !!

So here we are 3 months into our new venture of selling all our milk...raw...direct from our farm and I have to say, its going well. On Mondays we often sell out. We've had to move some customers to other days. Since the article about our farm ran in GRAZE magazine last month,  http://www.grazeonline.com/  we've had 2-3 new milk customers every week. Some have driven as much as 3 hours one way to get to us. Thank you. Let me say it again . Thank You !

We do our best to make it worth the trip. We give tours of the farm. We let customers children actually TOUCH the farm animals.  Young children love to collect the feathers laying around. Not only do they collect the feathers, they turn themsleves into Lovely Peacock Lady and Angry Chicken Girl and write a play about those characters.

We also make it known we have 100% grass fed beef and pastured pork for sale . On good days the chickens cooperate enough to produce a few eggs to go with the bacon.

And we don't have to get up so early in order to get all the milking done before the milk truck comes. We milk on the best schedule for us and for our cows. Viva La Raw Milk !!!