Admiral, there be goats here!
OK, I finally got to use the line from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, albeit what Jimmy Doohan said as Scotty was “Admiral, there be whales here,” I’ve wanted to use the line somehow and finally found a place right here in Business, Inc., where there be goats here this week.
Harmony Lane Farm & Creamery – 285 Harmony Lane – Smithville – 615-684-7659
What caught my eye this week, was an advertisement about one of my favorite expendables which is, if you haven’t read this before, homemade soap. Call me old-fashioned – it won’t be the worst name I’ve been called – but anything not mass produced and made by hand gets my attention. Might be a yearning for yesteryear I don’t know.
In the case of Harmony Lane Farm & Creamery, it was their Goat’s Milk Soap which got my attention, and after a visit I found out a lot more is going on than just soap, which is worth a trip by itself.
Each artisan-crafted bar gets its skin-nourishing qualities from farm-raised Alpine, LaMancha, Saanen, Toggenburg and Nubian goats raised on premises and hand-milked on the 64-acre pesticide-free farm right here in town.
“We’re one of four grade-A goat dairies in the state of Tennessee and the only one in Smithville,” said owner Julie David. “We have over 100 goats and we should be freshening or giving birth to about 60 this year. We make everything here on the farm.”
Besides goats, the farm has pigs which are raised on the farm and taken to a USDA facility to process for the meat, Jersey cows, free-range chickens and they make cheese on site and even give tours of the facility.
As for the goats, which produce the milk for cheese and soap, they are fed verified non-GMO feed, organic kelp and organic free-choice minerals along with daily walks to the blackberry pasture.
The soap is handcrafted in small batches using a cold-press method and contains no preservatives or harsh chemicals. It combines certified organic palm oil, 100 percent food-grade olive oil (rich in antioxidants), castor oil, essential oils and various botanicals with double the amount of moisturizing raw goat’s milk. Each bar is individually cut and hand wrapped which accounts for the cool variation in size and shape making each bar unique.
The soap, cheese, meats, gifts and even chocolate fudge are all sold on premises at the Farm Store. I picked up a bar of Heavenly Honeysuckle and a Cinnamon blend for my sister which she put out right away so I tried hers first and it was fantastic! Just a tip, if you are going to use handmade soap make sure to get a soap dish that drains completely from the bottom. As these soaps are so fresh, if they sit in a puddle of water your soap won’t last as long.
The cheese hadn’t been made this year yet, but that gives me a good reason to stop back by.
If you want to tour, you can take a guided tour where you’ll find out all about the animals and how they’re cared for. You can milk a goat by hand and even hold and bottle feed the babies. On my visit I was fortunate as two Saanen goat babies had just been born and they were so cute. David told me Saanen’s were the largest of the goat breeds at the farm. They cried like human babies which I thought was pretty interesting.
For more information visit their website at www.harmonylanefarms.com
