When I first began this dairy goat operation, I knew I wanted to get into soap making. I’ve always been both fascinated and impressed with the idea of soap. I had wanted to get into it for years, but I just didn’t know where to begin.

Well, step number one was buying a dairy goat. Not that you need a goat to make soap. Even if you don’t have a goat, you can still make goat milk soap. You simply buy the milk from the grocery store, and that will work just fine. But I wanted to take it one step further, because, why not, right?

I wanted to make a move toward sustainability, so why not use everything the animal has to offer if I’m going to be hand milking her twice a day, regardless of what I do with the milk? And we have a lot of milk.

And I find it to be more authentic on my part to make goat milk soap out of milk that I actually acquired from a dairy goat that I own. Farm to table. Handmade. That sort of thing. I just really like that and appreciate that sort of work ethic. I often joke that I’m living like I’m preparing to live in a world without electricity. My mom says I remind her of her grandma. Little House on the Prairie, but with pink hair.

Over the summer, Killdeer was producing a gallon or more of milk a day. We just can’t drink that much milk at once. The goat kids had first dibs on the milk, and they drank the majority of it for the first several months of their lives. Once they were weaned, we had more than we knew what to do with.

Just kidding. I knew what to do with it.

I froze the heck out of that milk.

And that’s good, because, in order to make goat milk soap, I needed frozen milk anyway.

Goat milk really needs to start frozen when you make soap because of its natural sugars. Sodium hydroxide (lye) reacts to liquid, and it gets hot once it’s mixed, and it heats up fast because of the chemical reaction. And it can burn you (please wear proper protective clothing when making soap). So that’s why I start with frozen milk. If you don’t, the lye will heat up and burn the sugars in the milk. This will give you a caramel colored soap, which isn’t so bad, I guess, unless you totally burn the milk. I just like for my soap to be as close to an oatmeal color as I can get it. It appeals to me. So I freeze the milk.

I could bore you with all the science of soap making, but I’m not really writing this post for a soap tutorial. There are plenty of recipes, books, and calculators out there in the world.

I did create my own soap recipe, straight from my own noggin, and I’m pretty proud of that. That takes some time, effort, and willingness to experiment. Lots of research on saponification values and running ingredients and percentages through soap calculators. Factors like hardness, cleansing, bubbliness, and emollience. Different mixtures of fats and oils produce different qualities in soap. It’s fun for me, but it might be boring for others. If not, hit me up, and we’ll chat about soap. I’d love to.

What it all boils down to, you can learn from Fight Club, which is that mixing fats and lye creates soap. Just don’t put vinegar on a lye burn; Tyler Durden was wrong.

So, all that to say, I needed goat milk for making goat milk soap, and I had my dairy goat. All I needed was to get the milk out of the goat. Easy. Right?

Wrong.

Remember when I told you that Killdeer was a show goat? Yeeeeeaaaah… and she had the attitude to match. She knew I was a rookie, and she wasn’t having it. She is a very sweet goat these days, but she and I went through some stuff. I’d like to say she taught me a lot through her patience with me, but that’s not really the case. Her only goal in life is to eat hay and grain, and to – no, that’s about it. She just wants to eat. She couldn’t care less about the sort of teacher she was to me. She was the princess, and I was merely there to cater to her whims. Whims that did not include kindly walking onto a stanchion for her new owner.

Now, the breeder – she made it look super easy. She led Killdeer to the stanchion and right up onto it, showed me the general process for milking a goat, how to trim hooves, etc… and she said the goat was trained to do all these things. I thought it would be easy.

Well, the lie detector test determined that was a lie.

Killdeer had only just met me, and she wasn’t about to let me lead her up a stanchion to get anywhere near her udders. “Hard pass! No, thanks, human!” We were about to butt heads, and I was pretty sure I was going to lose. My head isn’t nearly as hard as hers.

Have you ever tried to wrestle an irritated, postpartum dairy goat?

You’re right; of course you haven’t. You are in your right mind, and you probably buy your milk from Kroger like a normal person. I, on the other hand, had delusions of grandeur and believed this would somehow be easy. Why I would think that (when nothing up until this point had been anything but hard), I have no idea, but here we were.

It’s the first full day of owning this goat. The sun is shining. The goat kids are in the pasture, frolicking and making cute little goat kid sounds. The stanchion is ready. I have a milk collection container (a small stock pot, because my metal milk pails haven’t been delivered yet). I have the teat dip and the nitrile gloves. I am prepared for this moment. Success will find me. I will provide my family with fresh milk to drink. I will make soap. I am a milk maid!

I am an idiot.

Killdeer took one look at me and said, “Not today, satan!” She knew what I was about. For the better part of the morning, I chased that goat around the pasture. No matter what I did, I could not catch that heifer. That’s what I resorted to calling her, because I was just exhausted and wrecked.

Goats are surprisingly fast. Or I was just out of shape at this point. Probably both statements are true in the spring of 2021. Today I can lift 50-pound bags of grain onto one shoulder and heave them across the yard and haul filled-to-the-brim water pails from the house to the pasture without stopping for breaks, which is just what farm work will do for you, but at this point, I couldn’t do any of that. I was weak, and I was soft. I didn’t have any confidence in my abilities. I had all the book knowledge on how to handle this goat, and not an ounce of authority to make it happen. And Killdeer knew that.

She could tell by the way I spoke, by the way I handled her lead. By the way I carried myself. By the way I cried, leaning up against the wall of the barn, begging her to cooperate with me so I could milk her. I was being bullied by a dairy goat.

This went on for weeks. Every day was a struggle. I kind of hated that goat. I was going to turn her into my dinner. She’d be the most expensive goat meal anyone had ever eaten, and I didn’t even care. I was over it.

I’m pretty sure I yelled. Okay, I know I yelled. My neighbors must have thought I’d come unglued. Unhinged. At the very least, a hot mess and out of her league.

There was one particular morning where I ended up slammed against a wall, bruised, and I just completely gave up. Tossed the whole lot of supplies on the ground, probably cursed, and went inside the house to have a meltdown.

I called my husband crying. “I can’t do this. That stupid goat won’t cooperate. I can’t get her on the stanchion. She won’t let me milk her. And if she happens to allow the briefest window of time and I somehow miraculously get her onto the stand, she kicks the milk bucket (and me) to no end, spills the milk, and then throws her weight around to the point where she’s going to fall from the stanchion and break her own neck. I am done. I’m selling her. She’s stew. Forget the milk. Forget the soap.”

Killdeer did not get milked on that particular morning. Hours later, Hubby came home from work and was able to get her onto the stanchion and get her milked. He got her back onto a regular milking schedule. How did he do that? What I’d been trying to do all day, he did in a matter of minutes. What gives? What was I doing wrong? Did the goat just hate me?

Cooler heads prevailed, and I started doing some research into goat psychology. I’m not even kidding. Kind of wish I were.

No; I’m not. I’m actually super into that kind of thing.

Turns out, goats have a sort of hierarchy. They are social creatures and kind of feudalistic. Some goats are more respected in the herd than others. Superior goats get their way. It’s like the pecking order in a flock of chickens. I get that.

Guess which goat Killdeer was? You can guess which one I was; of that, I have no doubt.

So, how do you become a social climber in the world of goats? By becoming a goat yourself.

So, yep. I became a goat. If you want to be a goat respected among her peers, you have to be a goat worthy of that place in the herd.

So I kneed her in the side. Not hard. Not aggressively or meanly. Nothing to cause harm or pain. Just a nudge. A superior doe does not give way or make room for an inferior one. The leader of the herd gets made way for. A herd leader nudges and bumps other goats to make them move. A superior goat does not walk around another goat to get to where she wants to be. She makes them move. So I rose in the ranks by simply putting my knee into Killdeer’s side and making her move for me. And guess what? This clocked in her little goat brain, and she moved. It was a miracle.

Okay; it wasn’t a miracle. I had just learned to speak her language. Killdeer needed someone who could lead her, not with angry words or harsh tone, and not just by sheer force of strength or will. She needed someone who had know-how and confidence to take charge, but not the bullying style of leadership; she needed a firm but gentle hand.

There are some more extreme measures that can be taken, such as getting a water bottle and spritzing the goats to make them move. Goats tend to think that water is pure acid, and they will gladly move out of the way for you if you spray them. Beyond that, technically, you can even dump an entire bucket of water over a goat’s head (that advice came straight from a goat information website I found). Goats hate water on their heads. That’s not really my style, in general, but sometimes I will give the boys a spritz. They’re just an entirely different beast with agendas all their own. I guess it’s really about learning each individual animal’s personality and needs and then listening to what they tell you. About following your gut and your heart. There is no one size fits all when it comes to goats. Or chickens. Or people.

We are all individuals, and we all require relationships that meet us where we are and that love us unconditionally. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t speak truth, or say how we feel, etc… but we should speak the truth in love. We need to see people as people and not lump them into categories of this or that, while calling the this good and tolerable, while calling the that bad and unloveable. Unsavable. At least I think so.

God loved the world, so He sent His Son. He didn’t say He sent Jesus to save only the people we like best, who are most like us, who look like us, who talk like us, who think like us. I’m not the authority, and I don’t get to choose who God loves. If we get to choose who Jesus loves and died for, I can be pretty biased and selfish. There are days I might be assured that Jesus didn’t die for the person who cut me off in traffic, or who voted differently than I did. And if that’s the case, and we get to choose who gets saved and who doesn’t, I know I wouldn’t make at least one person’s list. Probably a lot more than that. It makes me glad it’s not people who get to decide who is lovable to God. I know I couldn’t be good enough to count myself among the worthy. No one is worthy.

Yet He came and died regardless. And Jesus didn’t come for just some of us. No; He said everyone. That literally means everyone.

That means the person on the other end of the political spectrum. The friend of a different religion. Those who believe differently than you do. The friend who betrayed you. The ones who turned their backs on you. That someone who treated you poorly. The father who left you. All of them.

We are not called to love just the ones who look the most like us, or who treat us the best, or the ones who are the most lovable in our own estimation. I don’t get to make that call. That’s above my pay grade. I’m just called to love. There’s no quantification or qualification. Jesus loves. So love.

Love people. Treat them the way you want to be treated. Be honest. Be firm. But be gentle. Be tender.

Fortunately, kneeing Killdeer in her side did the trick, and suddenly Killdeer had some respect for me. “Okay, you’re not as much of an idiot as I originally thought. I guess you’ll do.” I had learned to speak goat, and she started letting me milk her. I could get close to her. We were learning to trust each other.

By the end of summer and into early fall, we had a good routine down. She would walk into the milk room and jump right up onto the stanchion. Grain in the tub for her to munch. Gloves on, teat dip, milk the goat, teat dip again, remove gloves, give her a goat cookie. Simple and easy. I wish it could have been that easy all along.

But if it had been that easy to begin with, I wouldn’t have learned the things I did. More reminders about grit. About not giving up. About pressing in and doing the hard things. Learning to be physically strong and persevere in farming were preparing me to do emotionally and spiritually difficult things.

To be tough when I needed to be tough. And to be soft when I needed to be soft. It’s not all one or the other. You can be gritty and persevere through trial, and yet still be soft and tender to the people and creatures God has entrusted to your care.

Faith, like farming, is a balance of fortitude and tenderness. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I think they depend on each other. Jesus is both the Lion of Judah and the Lamb who was slain for the world. Omnipotent Creator while also Son of God who followed in obedience and humble sacrifice for someone like me. All the power of heaven at His command, to cause wind and sea to obey Him, yet warm and gentle enough for children to draw near.

Coexisting antonyms. What a beautiful irony.

Tender honesty.

Gritty love.

Innocent blood spilled for the unworthy prisoner.

That’s how I want to live my life. With all the autonomy His sacrifice has given me, knowing I’m allowed to choose where I want to go and what I want to do and how I want to live. And knowing I can choose anything I want. And then choosing Him.

Because He chose me first.

I choose to sit at His feet in worship and follow Him wherever He leads. Because I owe everything to Him.

I don’t follow Him because He commands it. I have free will.

I follow Him because of His example. Because of what He did for me. Something I couldn’t do for myself.

No one has ever loved me so fiercely and yet so tenderly. How could I ever say no?

He loved me first.

And that’s what I want to do. Love first. The rest will follow.