The Dairy Business Innovation Center is sponsoring two half-day goat milk soap workshops in April, offering dairy goat farmers another stream of potential revenue for their family farms.

 

The workshops will provide an opportunity to learn how to make soap for use in the home or to develop into a small business. Dela Ends, an experienced goat milk soap maker from Scotch Hill Farm near Brodhead, Wis., will teach the class. Dela and her husband, Tony, have developed a successful commercial soap making business, using milk form their small herd of dairy goats.  

 

Goat milk soaps are made via a milling process, producing a long-lasting soap with high quality texture. Ends will demonstrate how to use essential oils and herbs to create different soap scents. Dela and Tony sell their farm soaps in various outlets in the Janesville and Chicago markets. Their soap-making business has created a viable secondary income for their Scotch Hill Farm, an organic Community Supported Agriculture business.

 

Each workshop is limited to 14 people and pre-registration is required. Fee is $20 for the 3-1/2 hour class. Workshop dates and locations are: 

• April 8: the workshop will begin at 1 p.m. at the UW-Extension office in Grant County at 916 E. Elm Street in Lancaster, Wis. 
• April 9: the workshop will begin at 1 p.m. in West Salem, Wis., at the Hamilton Town Hall, N5101 N. Leonard St.

For a registration form, visit http://www.dbicusa.org/goats_milk.php or contact DBIC Goat Program Director Jeanne Meier at 608-219-4081, or email jeannemariemeier@gmail.com.  Attendees should bring small clean empty cardboard frozen juice containers or cardboard pint milk containers for the samples they will take home to age.