Pot on the stove, mixing bowls on the counter, hand-held blender whirling into action … things are cooking in the kitchen of Tracy Mercer’s Amaranth farmhouse. As the 34-year-old brunette with an easy laugh patiently stirs ingredients in a bowl, her two-year-old daughter, Avery, tugs on mom’s apron looking for attention.
Husband Dustin, 36, the muscles behind the operation, waits on standby. He’s in charge of lifting the heavy pots and working the blender. Tracy’s expecting their second child in November, so it’s a team effort for this expanding family.
With a summer storm brewing, it’s a good day to be in the kitchen. But, it’s not cookies, muffins or a pot roast on the menu this day. Tracy is whipping up a batch of all-natural goat’s milk soap, sold under the brand of GreenDay Farms.
A fenced-in pen in the backyard of the 100-acre farm, minutes west of Shelburne’s border, houses the four-legged bleating animals that provide the starring ingredient.
The Mercer’s bought the property about two years ago, after selling their home in Orangeville. Aside from 85 goats, they share it with three horses, chickens, roosters, turkeys and the family cow.
“We’re both outdoor people,” Tracy explains about their decision to relocate from Orangeville to the country farm. She gave up her job in Toronto, a commute she was more than willing to forgo, when Avery was born, but Dustin continues to work as a farrier, spending his off-hours keeping up with chores on the farm.
The couple started breeding goats for their meat, a demand they can’t keep up with as each male kid is sold almost immediately after birth. But then another idea formed, after getting inspiration from a rather unusual source.
“Just after we moved here we were watching the television show Dirty Jobs and they were making goat’s milk soap. It just dawned on me we could be doing that here,” Tracy explains.
Drawing on her university education as an environmental engineer, along with 10 years of experience working as an esthetician, Tracy headed first to her computer and the library, and then into the kitchen.
“I did a ton of research and just started playing around,” she says. “Then I came up with a base recipe and add or subtract different ingredients to make the soap.”
Tracy uses a cold-pressed method for making her soap, which means the naturally occurring glycerin, a prized skin conditioner, remains in the product. In most commercially prepared soap, the glycerin is removed and used in the production of higher priced beauty soap bars or moisturizing creams and lotions.
Commercially prepared soap is also made from rendered animal fat, called tallow, which is cheaper to use and creates a longer shelf life for the soap. At GreenDay Farms, Tracy only uses natural vegetable oils — like coconut, olive and palm— to make her soap.
Although the Mercer’s breed Kiko, Boar and Nubian goats, only the milk of the latter is used in the production of the soap. Each bar produced features approximately 25 per cent goat’s milk, which contains pH levels similar to human skin.
“I have no water in mine,” Tracy says. “It’s all goat’s milk.”
Chemicals and additives found in many tallow-based soaps actually strip away the protective acidic layer on skin, whereas goat’s milk, due to its pH levels, actually neutralizes the contaminants, bacteria and viruses that may cause damage.
To prevent the milk from curdling when mixed with lye, Tracy freezes it in pre-measured batches. Today she’s making a batch of two-tone lavender mint soap.
In the pot on the stove, olive, coconut and palm oil are heating until they reach a temperature of 100 degrees. Tracy puts the frozen goat’s milk to a mixing bowl and then slowly adds the lye in small batches until it is mixed through and the milk is melted, a process that takes about 10 minutes.
Once the oils reach the desired temperature, and the lye and milk are thoroughly combined, they’re blended together by Dustin using a hand-held blender.
Afterwards, the mixture is divided into two. Peppermint essential oil is added to the first half, with chlorophyll, a green pigment extracted from plants, added for colour. The second half of the batch gets a dose of lavender essential oil for fragrance and alkanet root powder, which turns it purple, is added for colour.
“We don’t use any synthetic fragrances or artificial colouring,” Tracy says.
The two batches are then poured and layered into a wax paper-lined mold, hand-built by Dustin after numerous “trial and error” experiments to get the right size and shape. The soap sits for 24 hours before it comes out of the mold and is cut into bars, each weighing about 113 grams.
“After it’s cut, the soap sits for 30 days to ensure all the lye has completely reacted and there’s no lye left present in the soap,” Tracy explains.
GreenDay Farms produces 20 different varieties of soap, including some customized for people with sensitive skins types, babies and even Dirty Dog Shampoo.
Tracy’s recipes include Avocado & Lime Exfoliator, Lavendar, Chamomile & Orange, Hempster’s Delight, Green Tea, Olive Oil, White Chocolate Mousse, Cucumber & Aloe, Gardener’s, Multi-Vitamin, Rhassoul Clay, Oats N’ Honey, Chocolate Mint Swirl and See You Later Alligator, to mention a few. She also carries a line of bath and body accessories and can create gift packages for weddings, showers, and other special gatherings.
Soap making in the Mercer household usually takes place at night after Avery, who keeps mom running during the day, is asleep. They usually make four, 20-pound batches at a time, which works out to roughly 80 bars of soap.
“It can take an hour or so just weighing out all the ingredients and about 30-45 minutes for the rest of the process,” Tracy says. “Like baking, you have to use precise measurements and methods.”
While Dustin created the molds, Tracy designed all the packaging and marketing material herself. She had planned for a full-scale launch of her products earlier in the year, but then found out she was pregnant and decided to scale back.
For now, much of her sales come through the company website, although the soap is also sold at Harmony Whole Foods in Orangeville, through a Merle Norman chain in Texas and Tracy makes customized small courtesy bars for a hotel in Toronto.
Once the new baby is born and both children are a little older, she hopes to again ramp up for wide-scale launch and turn it into a full-time business venture.
“I want to retire,” Dustin quips with a cheeky grin as his wife talks about her future expansion plans.
Until that time, Tracy will focus on her growing family and passion for creating new varieties of chemical- and preservative-free goat’s milk soap. For more information, visit www.greendayfarms.org or call 647-221-7427.