Last month we revisited the on-line farmers market from LEAF food hub.
River to River farm is one of the producers that offer some unique items made from goat milk.
Summer is approaching and farmers are busy with new produce popping up and products coming on line.
In north eastern Johnson County along route 45 Tam and John Pirmann are also busy at river to river farm.
The Pirmann’s searched for a few years before purchasing the farm as a retirement property while they were living in the Belleville.
“We’ve both been big into gardening, as John says “It’s cheaper than paying for a therapist.”
Typically farms are started and past down to the next generation, however this farm got its start a little different, thanks to their son Kris.
“He used the place we have to start River to River, so we came down on the weekends to help him, he and his wife got it up and going and took the ball and ran with it and we were the assistants, they have since moved on, John and I have carried on, not quite to the extent they did, they’re much younger and have more energy.”
A few years later their son started on a new endeavor, so having the passion and experience in gardening combined with retirement Tam and John took over River to River Farm full time.
“We pulled our resources and our knowledge and we made it work.”
The Pirmann’s have two high tunnels on their farm, which gives them more control over the growing conditions and extends their growing season.
Their main crops are ginger and turmeric, both of which has a lengthy growing period.
“Goes in the ground in May and we don’t harvest until October, so in between those periods we grow a variety of other vegetables as well.”
While their main produce grows all summer they have other crops that spring up throughout the season to help boost their sells.
Besides producing items for your inside your body, they also make products for outside your body.
“We have goats on our farm and I make goats milk soap and goat milk lotion as well as a few other items.”
About a decade ago Tam had a friend that introduced her to a new hobby, making soap.
“So I tried it out, we made soap down in her basement for a year or so and I thought it was great, I loved it, its kind of a mix of art and science.”
Goat’s milk has twice the level of beneficial fatty acids in it along with vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
“It’s really good for your skin, there’s something about the protein chain in goats milk that makes it real easy to absorb into your skin, so its very moisturizing it doesn’t dry you out like a lot of soaps.”
It’s also known to help with acne, premature aging, and irritation, along with a few other benefits.
“Everybody in, there we go.”
The Pirmann’s invited me to their farm so I could see how the soap is made.
The first step is to get some milk.
And lure a goat to the barn.
“Come on Button, let’s get some grain”
“And like I said they’ll do anything for grain, so I just have to get the grain and she’ll come up”
But today Button needed a little more direction, so Tam had to lead her to the barn.
“Up you go”
“Right now were milking two of our doe’s and that provides us right now enough milk for the soap, and lotion and then occasionally when we have a whole bunch I make chevre, which is fresh goats cheese.”
The goats usually produce about half a gallon of milk a day for the Pirmann’s, but their not the only one’s using it.
“She has twins and so her twins I share milk with the twins so I don’t get a s much from her as I do the goat who has a single kidd.”
Now that we collected the milk, its time to get started.
“We’ll take the milk inside the house now and we will pasteurize it, we started pasteurizing milk right away this year that way it’s prepped and ready to go when we want to use it for either soap or cheese or the lotion.”
“We filter it first, and we have a thermometer that we set.”
Pasteurizing the milk kills harmful bacteria by heating the milk for a set period of time.
“The thermometer goes in and the temp goes on low and it takes about 20 minutes or so to get it up to temperature.”
Once the milk has a few minutes at 170 degrees is time to measure out the milk.
“Now it’s going into the ice cube trays and we strain it one more time.”
Pirmann freezes the milk in ice cube trays to measure out one-ounce cubes for making soap and lotion, but later on she’ll show me another reason to freeze the milk.
We grab some of the frozen milk cubes and head to the workshop and grab some more ingredients.
“Olive oil, castor oil, coconut oil palm oil.”
Then we prepare the milk by adding a little water and some lye which is why it needs to be frozen.
“The lye heats up to the point that if the milk was not frozen it would scald it would burn, it would smell really bad and would turn bright orange.”
Now that the milk is thawed its time to combine all the ingredients.
“Give it a stir, Blender NAT, you can see that it’s getting thicker and what were looking for is called trace and that’s when it gets thick enough that it leaves a trace when you dribble it across the surface.”
Pirmann mixes in some essential oil …
“Now were good and thick, definitely a trace.”
…and then pours the soap in a mold that results in a five-pound bar of soap.
“So I’m going to give it a couple of good taps(Tap Tap Tap) and then generally what I do is I take a skewer here and just do some swirls to just decorate the top a little bit.”
“So there’s the soap it is finished and now were going to set it aside.”
The soap sits for 24 to 48 hours to harden before its cut into four ounce bars and then cured for 4 weeks.
“I cut this at about 4.75, 4.8 ounces, it’ll loose that much water.”
In about a month the bars of soap will be packaged and sold in some local stores and on the online farmers market through LEAF food hub,
