20 October 2006
Soapy goats
Today and yesterday we made soap. Coconut oil, olive oil and cocoa and shea butter are mixed with lye (sodium hydroxide) and goats' milk, with essential oils for fragrance. It’s not a complex process but the temperatures, amounts, and stirring times all have to be just right. Once it’s mixed we pour into moulds by hand from plastic jugs. The soap thickens quickly, so you have to be fast but careful - the mixture still contains a lot of free lye so is very corrosive. It looks a lot like custard. 
Yesterday evening we went for a walk down to the beach, which is quite near here. The two dogs decided to come too and luckily they knew the way there and back.
We've been feeding the Toggenburg goats who make the milk for the soap. They eat grain and hay in their byre and grass in their pasture.
Yesterday evening we went for a walk down to the beach, which is quite near here. The two dogs decided to come too and luckily they knew the way there and back.
We've been feeding the Toggenburg goats who make the milk for the soap. They eat grain and hay in their byre and grass in their pasture.
Comments:
<< Home
This is all very idyllic. It must
be good to play a part in a sustainable industry.
I read on the Beeb website about Cod stocks in the North Adlantic - apparently in Europe and elsewhere in the world there is a policy of "fish to extinction", meanwhile jellyfish are stepping in to fill the space.
Each year since 2001, a fish advocacy group has correctly pointed out that the number of new fish being born in the North Adlantic is less than the number being extracted, and that therefore the fishing must stop so that the population can recover.
...and each year since 2001 this advice has been ignored on the grounds that the fishermen would have nothing much to do in that case.
Jelly and non-jelly fish compete for the ability to develop to maturity - adult fish eat jelly lavae, and likewise mature jellies sting and consume fish hatchlings.
The jellyfish are now in charge in Namibia and blocking inlets to power stations in Japan.
What's going to happen about this? it's unlikely that a fish protest group would form (they aren't sexy enough), though we do have the costumes
So let's think laterally here, (and with the mind of a beaurocrat):
What we actually require is a non-zero jellyfish quota
They'd have to be landed and
weighed properly, mind, and canned or smoked for good measure. Excess catches would have to be thrown back into the ocean.
..and you have to admit that there's something delightfully aposite and European about that kind of policy.
We have wine lakes, butter mountians - why not subsidise the fishermen to land jellyfish with massively over-specialised equipment and keep them gainfully employed while the normal fish get to prepare for the next onslaught?
more power to the goat-soapers! R
Post a Comment
be good to play a part in a sustainable industry.
I read on the Beeb website about Cod stocks in the North Adlantic - apparently in Europe and elsewhere in the world there is a policy of "fish to extinction", meanwhile jellyfish are stepping in to fill the space.
Each year since 2001, a fish advocacy group has correctly pointed out that the number of new fish being born in the North Adlantic is less than the number being extracted, and that therefore the fishing must stop so that the population can recover.
...and each year since 2001 this advice has been ignored on the grounds that the fishermen would have nothing much to do in that case.
Jelly and non-jelly fish compete for the ability to develop to maturity - adult fish eat jelly lavae, and likewise mature jellies sting and consume fish hatchlings.
The jellyfish are now in charge in Namibia and blocking inlets to power stations in Japan.
What's going to happen about this? it's unlikely that a fish protest group would form (they aren't sexy enough), though we do have the costumes
So let's think laterally here, (and with the mind of a beaurocrat):
What we actually require is a non-zero jellyfish quota
They'd have to be landed and
weighed properly, mind, and canned or smoked for good measure. Excess catches would have to be thrown back into the ocean.
..and you have to admit that there's something delightfully aposite and European about that kind of policy.
We have wine lakes, butter mountians - why not subsidise the fishermen to land jellyfish with massively over-specialised equipment and keep them gainfully employed while the normal fish get to prepare for the next onslaught?
more power to the goat-soapers! R
# posted by 
: 8:48 am
: 8:48 am << Home
