It takes about eight weeks to cue one bar of soap, on top of the time it takes to milk the goats and wait until the winter, so the entire process is a lengthy one, but worth it in the end. READ MORE: Annual lavender farm days offering expanded hours at Comox’s Shamrock Farm “Some of the essential oils are also produced on the farm as we are a lavender farm and we distill our own lavender oils so we put lavender essential oil in quite a few of our soaps.” The rest she fills with butters, oils and natural ingredients, providing a soothing scent. “I use the pure milk-no water-with lye to make the soap. “In the winter, I grab the frozen milk and I thaw it and make the soap,” Shannon said. However, once fall is finished, the soap-making process continues. “I milk in the morning and I take that milk and freeze it, and usually in the winter is when I’m making the soap.” This is due to the farm being too busy in the summer and there not being time to make the soap. “First, you need the milk, so I hand-milk the goats when they’re in milk,” Shannon said. There is a lot of work that goes into making the soaps and the process can be tedious and time-consuming, according to Shannon. There are now over ten different goat milk soaps available at the farm. Needless to say, Shannon figured it out, as the soaps were mild enough for her son’s skin. “It would help diversify the farm as well, so I ended up buying a Nubian goat with a kid at her side and she was in milk, and I just went to work to figure it out.” “I wanted to have it a farm-based product,” she said. “I had researched that goat milk soap was super mild and that it might help, so I decided it was something I would try making.”Īfter a trip to the library and reading a “whole bunch of books” on making soap, Shannon was eager to give it a go, but did not want to purchase goat milk just to make soap. “My son, when he was young, had problems with his skin and I couldn’t find a natural soap that would work,” Shannon said. Since then, the farm has grown considerably, with over 40 types of vegetables, fragrant lavenders and specialty cut flowers.Ībout a decade after they first opened the farm, the idea of a soap made from goat milk started to form, thanks to one of their three sons, who was around four-years-old at the time. Shannon and Mike Farrell have run Shamrock Farm in Comox since 1993, starting out with pumpkins and a pick-your-own pumpkin patch. (Shannon Farrell/Contributed to Black Press Media)Ī farm on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island has been making soaps for almost 20 years now with the help of some special ingredients-most notably, goat milk. Some of the different goat milk soaps that are available at Shamrock Farm.
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