Soapmaking

May 14, 2023

Howdy folks,

Well, it's been a momentous week out here on the ranch.  I officially switched over to working for the boss on Thursday, we finally got the certificate of occupancy on Friday and then the boss moved up to the new house on Saturday.  Suddenly, we are about to move and only have to wait on all the windows and doors being replaced in the old house, which begins tomorrow, on Monday, and is supposed to take 10-14 days.  We've been slowly moving stuff up to the new house over the last few weeks, with the boss doing most of it on their own with some big pushes by their daughter and son-in-law, and some hired hands to finish moving everything, including all the big stuff.  And, then, it was done.  We've been poking around the old house, trying to envision where we're going to put everything and what we need to get out of storage.  We're also dreaming about the new, fenced-in backyard that we'll have and the fact that we will no longer need to accompany the dogs when we let them outside!  Our rapidly exploding population of cats will be able to fully switch over to indoor/outdoor and we plan to quickly build a big catio in the small courtyard off of the back of the house.  We've had similar temperatures as last week, this time 41-81, with it generally being quite windy every day, but otherwise not much weather happening.  We're still holding off from packing for two main reasons.  First of all, the window replacement is going to take at least two weeks and then, since the adobe is going to need to be cut open to get all the old windows out, there will be some kind of plaster/adobe repair that will need to be done afterwards.  Also, we are literally 100 feet away and feel that when the time is finally right we will just carry most of our stuff over, as is, one armload at a time until it's all over there.  We shipped a whole tractor trailer load of stuff out here that we condensed from four different properties that we sold over the year before we moved and put it into two large and one small storage units out here behind Pecos River Station.  Our place is pretty tiny and we only whittled the storage units down to the two large ones, so not much made it over here in the first place and a lot of it that did is still boxed up.  Once we get back into those last two units we can't wait to rediscover some of the stuff that we haven't seen in two and a half years!  It will be like Christmas in June and July!

Erin finally made her first batch of soap and has steamrolled right through and rapidly made her second and third immediately thereafter.  She is still making her wooden molds for the bars of soap, but has started with an easy mold made out of milk cartons.  For her first three batches she has made the following: lavender castile soap; lavender bastille soap; and creamy shea butter bastille soap.  Castile soap is one that is made solely from olive oil and bastille soap is one that is olive oil mixed with another kind of oil.  They need to set for 2-3 days until the molds can be peeled off and then sliced into bars.  After that, they need to air and cure for anywhere from 4-8 weeks, depending upon the kind.  She is really excited about it and plans to quickly ramp up production so that she can start selling them on the website and also locally at farmers markets and local businesses.  She's also toying with the idea of bringing her former business back to life, which specialized in coffee & tea, and offering those products, too, whenever she does a market stand.  As I transition to working directly for the boss(still doing horses as part of our work-trade, and Erin doing the daily cleaning), I am taking over a lot of the errands that Erin had to run for the ranch and other various things that ended up falling in her lap.  As this continues to happen, she has more and more time to make soap and figure out other ways to grow her nascent business.  We already have the website and internet presence, and she is currently filing all the necessary paperwork to make everything official, so the only other piece is the on-the-ground presence locally, seeing which stores would be willing to sell her stuff and which markets would be the best use of her limited time.  On top of all of this work, she made time to go and hang out with her girlfriends in Las Vegas yesterday, with me willingly offering to be chauffeur, just so that I could make a stop at the Skillet for a snack and a few beers!

This week we're back to a normal batch of pictures, after last week's horse stampede series.  The first two are art projects of mine: first, one of me sending the boss a photo to see what to do with the mirror in the picture; then, one of my favorite paintings that we have by Leonard Peltier.  Then, two shots of our little brat, Daisy: first, a shot from behind of her looking out of her little kennel; then, latching onto the bottle in front of our ancient 20 year old, Bucky.  Next, the scene I described last week of me and the dogs walking back home along the driveway with the nearly full moon climbing our little hill.  Then, four shots of Erin's first foray into soapmaking: the first two showing what was involved in the process; then, the soap setting in the mold; and, finally, all sliced up and ready to cure.  Next, a couple of outdoor-themed shots: first, the garlic growing in the garden; then, my rain jacket plastered with bits and pieces of hay, after getting caught out in a downpour with the horses.  Then, one of my new, little projects, making this courtyard look good with the fountains and planters...I had to move the fountain three times and the planters twice!  Next, a shot of Barillas Peak with its fire tower gleaming away in the sun on a UV11 day, framed over one of the new house's stone buttresses.  Then, the nearly full moon caught reflected in the water trough, the night before it reached 100% illumination and rose right at sunset.  Finally, two shots from the meat department of our favorite, little grocery store in Las Vegas, Lowe's Super Saver, and their wickedly funny sense of humor and gorgeous, hand-drawn sign using Bob, from Bob's Burgers, to showcase their meat case...we love going in that place, you literally see the whole town there!

See you soon.