Ithaca Made!

Far Mountain Soap is now available at a new downtown location on State Street: Ithaca Made. It's a great store full of quirky locally made arts and crafts, just what the doctor ordered for that make-you-smile gift!

Ithaca Made
430 West State Street
Ithaca NY 14850
607.272.1396
www.ithacamade.com

Also on display are products from my other life as an art photographer and I will have rotating selection of some framed and some matted 8x12" and 5x8" prints and locally themed postcards available.

For more info on my photography please visit my website at
www.VerbergPhoto.com

Casper the Friendly Barn Cat

Since late spring last year we have a new cat who lives down in the barn. It's been a blessing as we have no rodents down there for only a handful of crunchies each day! Now all we need is a cat who does not mind living with the chickens and geese LOL

Casper really took to the goats and below is hugging our laMancha Gazelle. He will give all three goats face hugs when he can, and by the time it turned Fall he now also wants his own hugs from us. It took about six months but now he's about as snuggly as any cat I've known!

"I like you sooo much!"

"You're my favorite!"

Glycerin?

Something neat I thought I'd share:

What you see here is a raw soap mix, as in the oils & fats are chemically altered by the lye (saponified) to form soap, stirred with a hand blender. While blending something really neat happens on the surface: the formation of pure glycerin!

In commercially processed soap the glycerin formed in the saponification process is separated from the main soap to be sold separately, leaving the soap itself more harsh. Which is exactly why any hand made cold process soap is immediately nicer in use than commercial soap as the naturally occurring glycerin is still in the bar.

Here I stopped blending and the glycerin whirlpool sinks / absorbs back into the soap mix. This particular mix is Lye Soap, made with local organic lard and well water.

Here are the girls eating lunch - they only get fed once a day in winter, half a bucket of apple pomace (left over from pressing cider, we get it from a local cider mill) and a cup of bran (actually also leftovers, we get from a local flour mill) each. Thirteen still does not share well, so I feed them in two places and it kinda works like musical chairs with most times Thirteen ending up with two places! So sometimes I grab her collar and hook her on for 15 minutes or so - she can eat but not move places - and that settles her down for a couple days or so.

5 more weeks and Gazelle is due!
It will be her first kid(s); she's about as tall as the adult does now and getting wider every day - it's so neat, we've had her since she was a few weeks old, and now she'll have her own babies!

wrapped soap bars are $4
they weigh between 2.8 and 3.8 oz, depending on the type of soap

guest soap bars are $2

large shaped soaps are $3
like the flower, sunflower & snowflake soaps

small shaped soaps are $2
like the maple leaf, pumpkin & beehive soaps

DIY Nugget Packages are $10 for 1 1/2 lbs of noodled soap

two exciting new products!

This winter I'm introducing two exciting new products:

guest bars: of a variety of my soaps and you can pick & choose to your heart's content. Guest bars are poured from the extra bit of soap mix that did not fit the large molds, so supply is always different ~ guest bars are $2 each


DIY nugget packages: one and a half pounds of miscellaneous soap noodles, just add some milk and squeezing power to make your own soap balls (or sculptures!) - a perfect activity with friends and/or kids and their friends! ~ a gallon bag of noodles is $10

NEW • whey cool

an interesting soap made with sunflower oil and whey, the liquid leftover from cheese making. Whey has the vitamins and minerals of milk but not the milk fat, which makes this a good soap for people with normal skin. The soap itself is of a much lighter color than milk soap, more white than yellow, which is fitting as whey itself is lighter (greenish) as well.

made with local (organic) sunflower oil, organic unrefined coconut oil, organic palm kernel oil, natural kelp powder and whey from our own goat's milk