Triple milling, also known as French milling, is a traditional soap-making process that was perfected by French artisans. This process involves passing the soap mixture through a series of rollers, typically three times (hence the term "triple" milling), to thoroughly blend the ingredients. Each pass through the rollers refines the soap further, ensuring a consistent texture and helping to remove any excess water and air.
Uniformity and Smoothness: The milling process creates a soap that is uniform in texture, color, and fragrance. This means each bar is consistent from the first use to the last.
Longevity: Triple milled soap bars last significantly longer than regular soaps. The process removes excess water, making the bars denser and more compact. They don't melt away or become mushy in the shower as quickly as their non-milled counterparts.
Rich Lather: Despite their hardness, triple milled soaps produce a rich, luxurious lather that feels silky and indulgent on the skin.
Fragrance Retention: These soaps are excellent at retaining fragrance, providing a lasting sensory experience.
Goat milk is a powerhouse ingredient in skincare, and its inclusion in triple milled soap adds an array of benefits:
Moisturizing Properties: Goat milk is rich in fatty acids that help hydrate and retain skin moisture, making it ideal for dry or sensitive skin.
Gentle Exfoliation: The lactic acid in goat milk acts as a gentle exfoliant, helping to remove dead skin cells and promote a smoother, more radiant complexion.
Nutrient-Rich: It's packed with essential nutrients like Vitamin A, B2, B6, B12, and E, which are known for their skin-nourishing properties.
pH Balance: Goat milk has a pH level similar to human skin, helping to maintain the skin's natural barrier and prevent irritation.
Anti-Inflammatory: Thanks to its creamy consistency, goat milk soap has natural anti-inflammatory properties, making it soothing for conditions like eczema and psoriasis.
Triple milled goat milk soap represents the pinnacle of skincare luxury. The meticulous process of triple milling ensures a superior, long-lasting bar, while the inclusion of goat milk offers a plethora of skin-loving benefits. Whether you're seeking a soap that lasts longer, hydrates deeply, or simply provides a touch of everyday indulgence, triple milled goat milk soap is an unparalleled choice. Embrace the fusion of tradition and luxury, and make this exquisite soap a part of your daily skincare ritual.
]]>Rip Swan was a well-known architect, builder, and WWII veteran in Vermont and ran his thriving company from this very place. With time, however, the building's strength diminished, leaving it in a dilapidated state that most would shy away from. But at our farm, we embrace such challenges, determined to infuse new life into old structures and honor the rich history they hold.
Our property was bought by Rip and Lilian Swan in the 1940's, in the prime of their youth. The McDonald & Swan building became more than just a structure. It was a dream, a vision, a testament to the pursuit of success. As the years marched on, the building bore the brunt of time, gradually fading into a state of disrepair. But we’ve always believed that old is gold, and so, we decided to give this age-old structure a fresh lease of life.
Fast forward to the present: Our little commercial kitchen, where we craft our beloved goat milk fudge, has proven too small for our ambitions. You see, we have been pleasantly amazed by the avalanche of support from you lovely people. So much so, our brand has blossomed beyond our wildest dreams, leaving us in dire need of much more space.
And that's where our dear McDonald & Swan building steps into the picture. This renovation will expand our workspace to four times its current size, accommodating more fudge-making equipment and helping us keep up with your growing love for our products. But we're not stopping there! With more room at our disposal, we plan to tickle your taste buds with new confectionery delights, including tantalizing toffee, sugar free & no sugar added fudge options, and maybe some butterscotch candies.
It's not going to be an easy project. It's a long road ahead and Aden is taking on the task of the renovation which includes windows, doors, electrical, plumbing, flooring, painting, and even a new heating/cooling system. But come year-end, we hope to have the renovations done and dusted, and we will relocate the business over there once we receive regulatory approval from the Vermont DOH.
For those of you eager beavers wanting to catch a glimpse of what we're up to, we've included a "before" video right here in this blog post. Peek into the past and watch as we transform this relic into a thing of beauty.
Ingredients
PIZZA DOUGH
(You can also buy the premade dough that comes in bags from your supermarket if you don't have time to make your own)
6 cups All Purpose Flour
2 cups Water
1 tablespoon Yeast
1 tablespoon Salt
1 tablespoon Sugar
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
SAUCE
(You can use your favorite canned sauce if you don't want to make your own, or even fresh tomatoes if you have a garden)
28 ounces San Marzano Canned Tomato, diced
1 tablespoon Kosher Salt
1 teaspoon Pepper
6 large Basil leaves
3 large Garlic cloves
2 tablespoons Butter
1 large Carrot
1 large Celery stalk
1 medium Onion
ROASTED RED PEPPERS
1 large Red bell peppers
BABY SPINACH SAUTE
(We substitute this with swiss chard sometimes and it works great. Spinach grows best in cool weather so it's not always available)
9 ounces Baby spinach (Fresh or bagged is best)
1 medium Onion
6 large Garlic cloves
2 tablespoons olive oil
BALSAMIC REDUCTION
(You can use store bought balsamic reduction and skip making your own)
.5 cup Balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons Honey
CHEESE
2 cups Mozzarella (Fresh if you can find it, grated or sliced.)
1 cup parmesan, grated
Directions
1. If you have access to a mixer, place the dough hook on it and add the water, salt, sugar, olive oil, and yeast. Allow the mixture to activate for five minutes before adding any of the flour. Turn the mixer on low speed, and slowly add 1 cup of flour at a time, allowing it to completely mix before adding the remaining flour. You may need to turn off the mixer and pull the dough off the hook to reposition it in the bowl if the dough starts to look too dry. When you reach the right consistency the dough should be firm and shiny without being sticky. You may need to add more water or flour until it feels right. All this can be done by hand as well, but that requires a little more work. Roll the dough into a ball and coat it with additional olive oil. Place the dough in a bowl with plastic wrap over the top. This dough is best when you allow it to rise overnight inside your refrigerator, however you can let it rise on your counter for three hours if you are in a rush.
2. The sauce starts with something the Italians like to call a "soffritto." I use it in every tomato sauce that I make. Place the garlic, carrot, onion, and celery inside a food processor and pulse it a few seconds at a time until it turns into a fine, smooth paste. Add butter to your saucepan and allow it to gently melt down before adding the soffritto. You may need to add more butter depending on the size of the vegetables you used. Make sure there is enough butter bubbling in the pan to keep the mixture very wet, and allow it to cook for 5 - 10 minutes until the ingredients have melted together, lightly browned, and smell great. Add the tomatoes, salt, and pepper (more or less, to taste) to the sauce. Cover the pot and allow it to come to a slow sauté before adding the diced basil. Cook the sauce until reduced to a thicker consistency, since you don't want a runny pizza. Once fully cooked, remove the sauce from heat and allow it to cool.
3. Roasted red peppers are simple to make at home, right on your gas range burners (you can use an oven broiler or a grill if you don't cook with gas). Stores always get away with charging outrageous prices for them, and once you see how easy they are to make you won't buy them again. Coat the peppers in olive oil, and place them directly on the top of your range, over a medium flame. Be sure to have tongs available, otherwise you won't be able to turn them as they cook. Don't worry about the skin turning black, you can really scorch the peppers while they roast and it only makes it easier in the end to remove the skins. Once the peppers are blackened all around, remove them from the heat and place them under cold running water. Be careful when pulling off the stem as there is hot liquid inside and you don't want to burn your hands. Allow the peppers to fill up with cold water until the heat is gone. Removing the skins is easy, just scrape them off with your hands, or use the back of a spoon. Once all the skins are removed, slice the peppers into strips the width of a pencil.
4. When sautéing the spinach, start by completely melting the butter in your frying pan. Add the sliced onion, and allow it to cook until almost translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 2 - 3 minutes until the garlic is on the cusp of starting to brown. Next, add the baby spinach and cover the pan for a minute while it wilts down. Using tongs, combine all the butter, onion and garlic with the spinach and turn off heat once the spinach is wilted and combined. Add salt and pepper, to taste.
5. A balsamic reduction is easy to make. Simply combine the vinegar with the honey in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil, stirring constantly. Continue boiling until the mixture has reduced in half, to the consistency of molasses (about seven minutes). When it's hot it will drip off the spoon much easier, so be sure not to over-boil it. If you have a vent above your range, this would be a good time to turn it on!
6. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and position your oven rack on the bottom. Prepare a 11 X 17 sheet pan (or larger) by cutting a piece of parchment paper to place underneath the dough (to help prevent sticking). Use a liberal amount of olive oil on the pan and parchment paper. If you have allowed the dough to rise overnight in the refrigerator, then it will need a few hours to warm up before you can stretch it to the pan. Once the dough is ready, knead it down to shape the pan and stretch it to fit. Be sure that the dough is even on all corners. You should flip it after pressing so that both sides of the dough are coated with the olive oil. If the dough is resisting being stretched, simply let it rest for 15 minutes on the pan and try again. (You can also do what we do when it's good grilling weather and skip the sheet pan all together. We stretch out the dough and shape it directly on a well greased pizza peel with parchment and cook it on baking steel inside our propane grill at 450 degrees for 5 - 10 minutes).
7. Before adding all the ingredients to the dough, we like to season the dough with fresh cracked sea salt and pepper sprinkled evenly over the surface. Then, using a rubber spatula, spread the sauce evenly over the dough so that it covers the surface, leaving edges for the crust. Distribute the spinach mixture evenly on top of the sauce. I like to do this all by hand because it makes less of a mess and is easier to control. Next, sprinkle the 2 cups of mozzarella evenly on the top of the pizza, followed by the roasted red peppers on top of the cheese, and then the parmesan on top of everything at the end. Finally, drizzle the balsamic reduction over the top of the entire pizza in whichever fashion you choose. Don't forget to save some for the crust and you can also toss some extra olive oil on top of the pizza and the crust.
8.Bake the pizza in the preheated oven for 35 - 40 minutes (or longer, depending on how well-done you want it). The crust should be a deep golden brown. If the cheese starts to darken before the crust, place a piece of tin foil on top. Remove the pizza from the oven and allow 15 minutes to cool before cutting. We like to cut the pizza in squares so that we get 8 pieces out of it. Most people are full from 1 slice, but people like me always end up eating more than one, especially if I am not watching my carbs. Enjoy!
]]>The reason that we chose to discontinue the use of the white chocolate is because every single brand of it is made with either palm oil, or soy lecithin (a major allergen for many people). There are zero options to purchase white chocolate commercially without these ingredients in the USA unfortunately. The other problem is that all the white chocolate also contains powdered cows milk in a small amount. This didn't work for us as our goal is to keep our products focused around goat milk and other healthier options like reduced sugar and sugar free (which we are still developing). All of our amazing chocolate based fudges that use cocoa mass have gone unchanged.
What we found out over several months or testing is that all the flavors in our fudge because enhanced once we removed the white chocolate. It was hard for us to believe but the white chocolate actually muted all the delicious flavors rather then enhance them. The texture of all our white fudges is now creamier and less "chewy" so it melts in your mouth easier. We are extremely pleased with the results and our blind taste testers have been also. 100% of our lucky blind taste testers said that the new fudges without the white chocolate tasted so much better.
We also want to extend summer a little bit and offer our newest exciting flavor: Toasted Coconut Cream Goat Milk Fudge! It's absolutely incredible and we were inspired by the flavors of those crunchy coconut donuts you can get in a package at gas stations all across the country. It's pure coconut bliss!
Like most other companies we learn as we grow. We will always strive to make our products better and couldn't do it without any of you. Stay tuned for some of the holiday flavors we are working on and thank you as always for being our customer!
]]>This is an oldie from our farm, and was originally published on a blog from our previous company that we sold in 2020. The recipe is called Banana Skillet Brown Butter Pancake and it's simple to make and tastes so delicious. We don't cook a lot of breakfast meals these days because we are so busy making our goat milk fudge. There are only so many hours in the day and we like to save this recipe for a special occasion, like when our families visit.
I like to do as much of my cooking as possible in cast iron skillets. They hold heat, cook amazingly well, and I feel like I get better results than you do from cooking in the non-stick surface pans. I like to get my pan searing hot and then drop down my temperature as soon as I add my ingredients. Since they hold heat well, it usually gets quick jobs done fast without having to waste gas or electricity.
The cool thing about cooking this pancake in a cast iron skillet is that the edges crawl up the side of the pan while it’s baking in the oven (if you are so inclined to watch through the glass while it bakes). Everything expands and browns perfectly, and the banana gives it a wonderful texture that will melt in your mouth. This recipe is enough to serve up to 4 people depending on just how hungry you are.
You can use any size skillet, but your cooking time will be different depending on what you use. Just watch it cooking until it rises up the sides of the pans and a fork inserted into the center comes out clean. It will come out golden brown, dripping in melted brown butter. Then, of course, I like to cover mine in honey from our hives or real maple syrup from our forest. You can use powdered sugar or anything else that you like. Either way, you will not be disappointed with how quick and easy it is to make this delicious dish, and you will want to make it again!
Ingredients
Instructions
Preparation time: 10 minute(s)
Cooking time: 30 minute(s)
Number of servings (yield): 4
]]>When we started planning our fudge business over ten years ago and experimenting with different recipes we knew that the most important thing was to create fudge using old-fashioned, traditional cooking methods so that we could stand out from the competition. We believe that real fudge making is a lost art and we wanted to be a producer that helps to keep it alive.
Many fudge lovers don't realize that much of the fudge being sold online, in general stores, and even in specialty fudge stores is made using a box mix. It's a powder that requires adding butter (because the milk is already in powder form), warming up, mixing and pouring. To incorporate flavors they microwave the base mix to make it pliable and then mash it all together to make it look pretty.
Marketing gimmicks aside, the "fudge" they are selling is filled with palm oil, palm kernel oil, soy and vegetable oils. All these fats are melted together to form this fake fudge because it's so much easier and cheaper for them than making the real thing. This is also why many "fudge" producers don't list their ingredients. The very definition of fudge is: "Fudge is a type of sugar candy that is made by mixing sugar and milk, heating it to the soft-ball stage, and then beating the mixture while it cools so that it acquires a smooth, creamy consistency." They didn't need palm oil in the 1800's when fudge making began and they don't need it now!
For us it was simple. All our simplest chocolate based fudges are made with: Vermont goat milk, sugar, Belgian cocoa mass (pure chocolate), organic non-GMO Canadian corn syrup, bourbon vanilla and sea salt. It doesn't get more simple than this! This is why we believe our fudge flavors are so special and we are able to create them without adding a bunch of unnecessary fillers.
All our fudge is made in 12 pound batches and it begins with heating the goat milk in our fudge kettle until it starts to steam. We then add all our dry ingredients except for chocolate and allow the mixture to boil to soft-ball stage. The mixture must be timed carefully, stirred at exactly the right time and temperature, and cooled at exactly the right speed otherwise it can result in a grainy, failed batch of fudge.
While the fudge is cooling, we must add the chocolate, vanilla and any other ingredients at different intervals depending on the temperature of the fudge. Some of our fudge flavors have dried fruit, or cookies and if we add the cookies while the temperature is too high it will dissolve them so this is why it's taken years to develop our recipes.
Once the fudge is cooled to the proper temperature (which varies by flavor and ingredients), we then pour it into loaves and we decorate the tops with swirls and the fudge sets almost immediately. You don't even want to hear about what happens to our kettle if we pour it too late, but it makes quite a mess! We allow the fudge to sit out for 24 hours to continue firming before we hand cut each loaf into slices, wrap and box each slice and then off they go to our customers.
Our farm is located in the foothills of the green mountains and we wanted to incorporate that into all our packaging. All our goat milk fudge comes in one of our beautiful Vermont themed gift boxes with illustrations of the green mountains in the background. We love what we do and are so excited to share our creations with people looking to try something new.
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There are so many different kinds of goats. Lots of people raise Nigerian Dwarfs because they’re prolific, easy to care for, and produce an extremely high fat-content milk that can get great for making some cheeses. We used to know a family that raised Fainting Goats – the best part about them is that when they escape, they’re easy to catch! Some people raise goats for meat (not us, ever!) and others raise goats for cashmere wool. We, of course, raise dairy goats, and in our humble opinion, they’re the absolute best type of goat!
Even among dairy goats, there are all sorts of different breeds. There are Nubian goats, with their big floppy ears, and LaMancha goats, with very short ears! We had a Toggenburg dairy goat once that we named after NPR correspondent Nina Totenburg, and we’ve raised a few Oberhalsi over the years as well.
All of our goats now are Alpine and Saanen diary goats. Saanen dairy goats are all white and some of the biggest milk producers in the dairy goat world. Alpines produce a ton of milk as well, and come in a wide range of colors. There are some that think Alpines are a lot friendlier than other types of dairy goats, and while we have had a lot of sweet Alpine goats over the years, our Saanens are all very friendly as well!
We started our current herd more than a decade ago, while I was finishing up law school. Some of our first goats actually came from a convent up here in Vermont! What we were told at the time was that the nuns were getting too old, and the goats too large (more than 150 pounds each)! They were Alpine goats with beautiful Chamoisee colorings (a light, almost silvery brown). The nuns who entrusted us with their care were some of the kindest people we had ever met, and our herd grew naturally over the years from those goats: one of the male kids – Chip, and then eventually his son, Giles (also named after another NPR correspondent: Giles Snyder), sired all of the goats we still have today.
We had no idea (and, of course, neither did they) that some day they would be returning to Vermont to continue munching on those luscious Green Mountains. While I’m sure they would prefer some milder winters, they have never been happier as they are when picking through the abundant foliage that grows here from Spring through Fall.
Sometimes the hives grow beyond capacity, and the bees decide to split off and form a new hive somewhere else. When that happens they’ll start making a new queen, fill their bellies with honey and send out a signal to leave the hive. They entrust scout bees to find a new home for all of them, settling somewhere (usually a tree branch nearby the old hive) while they wait for the queen to decide where to go. Depending on where they’ve settled, an enterprising beekeeper can sometimes capture them and form a whole new hive! Simply by shaking most of the bees into a new hive box (and, most importantly, making sure that the queen is in there too), the entire swarm of bees will start marching in to the new hive. That’s what Aden did in the video below, filmed a few years back when we were still in Rhode Island.
What was especially remarkable about filming this was knowing Aden’s lifelong fear of bees. It was something he had inherited from his mother, and it wasn’t until he decided to start raising bees that he finally got past it. From someone who used to jump at the sound of a black fly buzzing around the picnic table thinking it might be a bee to now calmly collecting a few thousand of them, he has certainly come a long way! We hope you enjoy this video! Don't forget to check out our Honey & Syrups page for our Vermont maple syrup and honey!
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We have set up some wildlife cameras to snap some pictures of all the animals, and hope to be sharing all of those with you soon. In the meantime here is a short video of a bear and her cubs coming up the driveway last fall.
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For most of the past year our lives have been characterized by new experiences. After we first moved up to Vermont we spent each season exploring more and more of what our new home had to offer. And, of course, we set about starting Buster & Bella’s Specialty Co. by launching our Goats Milk Fudges!
Now that we’re entering our second Spring in Vermont and a whole new season of new beginnings it feels appropriate to finally start our new blog. It’s our way of sharing with all of our friends and customers what’s happening on the farm from week to week. Our goal is to post old stories and new projects, from weekend jobs to recipes to new adventures. Sometimes we’ll be posting about new flavors and products, but mostly this blog is intended to be about us, our farm, and the many friends and animals that enrich our lives! We hope you enjoy it!