So those in the know...... know that we also run The Clean Goat Soap Company. Started in 2019 we've slowly built it up. The response has been amazing, it really has. In fact the response was so good that we have found it difficult to make soap quick enough. Like most little businesses we therefore need time to allow us to expand to be able to meet the demand..... Not that we are complaining. We don't have staff, its just the two of us, although this year we will be having a helper for a few days a month. We also run the smallholding. Not all businesses have such a busy life in the background. Our background is essential, without the smallholding there are no goats, and no goats means no goats milk. Not all little businesses are what they claim to be, we are. A smallholding, with livestock. We feed and milk the goats, we have to muck them out daily, care for them and breed them so that they produce the milk. Then there is the time spent selling goats on, re-homing a few to us. Building and preparing to expand must all happen alongside all of that.
Yes you can buy in all the ingredients to make goats milk soap from a shop including the goats milk powdered and ready to use. Not us. This is our passion, a real down to basics life, done the hard way not because we love the hard work (we do actually otherwise why the hell would you do it!) but we are honest in this business. If you want to buy sustainable and you want to know that you are spending money where the ethics of the people taking your money are the same as yours; To know that we love the animals we keep, we care for them and in turn we are able to, with a touch of creativity, create something beautiful and useful all at the same time then we are the people to buy from. Now we would have loved to get our shampoos out faster and have made more ranges of products for people but I refer back to the point above, the smallholding.
We've gotten so close to drawing a line under some life changing jobs here. This place has been under construction for 4.5yrs so far. Its not an understatement to say once the last few jobs are done thats it.... Pour the gin and crack open a beer with your feet up! It means we can live here like we want to. Cutting our own wood will be simplified with a tractor and a track to the wood yard. The chainsaw and wood cutting area sorted, and pallet made shelters for the wood once cut meaning it all dries out and suddenly that process is easier than the adhoc mess we've had before. The concrete yards being laid for the goats (and the horses are next for that upgrade) means that our ability to control feet issues due to wet ground are nearly under our control. We can sweep and rinse the yards, the manure and loose hay can be collected with ease. It feels more tidy and organised, and with everything we have to do per day every day every minute saved in the long run is going to have a huge effect on us in the future.
We've even had enquires for volunteering here (once lockdowns have run their course hopefully) and having a place that can be safely navigated is important to us. It's important that we can share this place with others, we want to share our mistakes and our successes. Above all we want to share the beauty of the place, its simplicity and its wildness.
We also love to be creative, and the passion for building something yourself is beyond any form of success we normally feel, its life! It's about taking control of your own surroundings and building what you need, then what you want. Putting a touch of creativity on it and enjoying the process. We've lived here, truly and been immersed in the process, sometimes literally knee deep in the mud. I can't even begin to count the new skills we have learnt and still I am absorbing more. Those who have visited us know that our bathroom window fell out late summer of 2020. Still with a plastic bag and some nails that did the job whilst there were more important tasks on the horizon. Now this year we know that with an investment of £450 we can create an amazing workshop of tools and learn to make our own windows. So after failed attempts to find a joiner we will do it ourselves.
So when we say The Clean Goat Soap Company is going to be amazing and its worth sticking around with us we mean it. There will be more to come, be patient with us, follow us and maybe one day you'll find yourself visiting us for a course or volunteering with us. Now, how many other soap companies will do that!
Emma