Sunday Morning

It is Sunday morning, the only morning that I have to get up early and get my back in working order so that I can make it to Sunday School. I start my day off with a cup of Costa Rican coffee whose coffee beans were grown in volcanic earth, it is a gourmet coffee thats flavor is smooth, never bitter. I put just a touch of sweetener in it and real thick, foamy cream that has just freshly been skimmed from the top of yesterday's goat milking.

I also have two pieces of toast with homemade butter, also from my goat's milk cream skimmings. Then I slather the toast with honey, but not my own honey, I am not brave enough to keep bees yet.

I have to make butter often because it's shelf life isn't very long, it isn't pasteurized. I was making it in a blender but found that it was just too much work to clean the thing up. So now, I just put the cream in a clean glass jar and shake, rattle and roll. You have butter in no time. Then you strain out the buttermilk, squeeze out the extra liquid, rinse the butter in cold water and stir in a little salt. You can either drink the buttermilk or give it to the dogs, cat or chickens. I don't care for buttermilk, but my animals love it.

After breakfast and blogging, I have to go feed my chickens, feed my dogs and cat, then milk the goat, if she looks strutted. She has been slacking off on milk production lately, so I may not milk her until after Sunday School.

Goat Milk Lotion

Yes, I know that I didn't blog yesterday but I had already started this one when the storms came through and I had to shut off my computer. Then we lost our electricity, so I never finished it or got it posted. The following is yesterday's blog.

I have a lot of goat's milk in my freezer that I need to get rid of before my goats come fresh again. So I have decided to make lotion, cleanser and soap. I started my new adventure today.

I purchased most of the ingredients that I needed from that great Chinese distributor, Walmart, except for the Beeswax and Goat's Milk. I bought a Stick Blender that was made in China, they only had one choice available, so it got pitched in the old cart pretty quickly without much thought. They had Coconut Oil that is a dietary supplement that was actually manufactured in Florida. They had Spring Valley Vitamin E Oil for the skin that was manufactured in California. They also had some Aloe Vera Gel that wasn't exactly what my recipe called for because it wasn't 100% Aloe Vera, it was an Aloe Vera Gel for sunburn, but I didn't think it would hurt anything because it is for the skin and it was manufactured in Florida.

Here is the recipe:

1/8 tsp. borax
1/4 cup cold goat's milk
1/2 cup coconut oil
1 Tbsp. beeswax
1/2 cup Aloe Vera gel
1 tsp. Vitamin E oil

Heat borax and milk in microwave to boiling. Melt coconut oil and beeswax together in microwave but remove when oil gets hot and beeswax is not completely melted, the hot oil will melt the beeswax with a little time and stirring. Slowly add this to the borax/milk mixture using a stick blender. Add Vitamin E oil and cool to room temperature. Next add Aloe Vera to the cooled lotion and blend one final time.

I had to buy the beeswax on eBay.

We found this recipe to be way too greasy, but it may be because I used the wrong type of Aloe Vera Gel. This would make a great massage oil though.

I plan to order some pure Aloe Vera and try this recipe again because it is so easy. The hardest part was shaving the beeswax