About Sunset Pines Farm

Welcome to Sunset Pines Farm in Tift County.

We are a small farm located outside the city limits striving to promote a sustainable and local lifestyle through growing food and creating products from scratch with carefully selected ingredients grown by us or by our neighbors. You will find us at the Wiregrass Farmers Market on Saturday mornings from April through October, 9am-12pm.

Sunset Pines Farm is currently the home of over 30 happy chickens of different heirloom breeds. We adore their eggs.

Sunset Pines Farm is also the home of five Tennessee Fainting goats(all of which think they are our dogs), and a majestic Saanen (dairy) goat, Vanilla Bean. The fainting goats we keep for fun and because of their glorious personalities, and Vanilla Bean provides us with beautiful creamy milk almost year-round. We turn her milk into beautiful cheeses and mild handcrafted soaps and scrubs.

Sunset Pines Farm is also a certified wildlife sanctuary, so we see play hosts to several pairs of hawks, all sorts of small birds, owls, snakes, tortoises, and the occasional deer in our bottom pasture.

We also co-exist with four rescued dogs and two lazy cats.

We love to share our animals with friends, and if you visit during chore time, you might just get put to work milking or hoof trimming. Or, you can just watch.

To see information about the available soaps, please scroll down
To see information about our bath sugar scrubs, please scroll down
To learn about our goat milking process, you guessed it, scroll down :)

To inquire about our soaps and scrubs or to place an order, please contact us at 229-343-4918. Until then, may peace fill your days.

The Bath Scrubs

Here at Sunset Pines Farm we make several jarred scrubs. Those are excellent for exfoliating, also excellent gardener's or painter's hands cleansers. We love to use our scrubs to clean our hands after painting or crafting in general. We package them in lovely half-pint mason jars  for a great gift to yourself or others.

We use organic sugar and add ingredients grown mostly by us(herbs, flowers, fruit) and by neighborng farms(honey). Scrubs of all flavors are $4 each.

How does it work? Spoon some of the scrub mixture on your hands, rub vigorously, rinse with warm water, and enjoy the smoothest skin, ever.

Available "flavors"(those change weekly, you can order in advance of market):

* Sugar Cinnamon Spice
*Peppermint Sugar
*Lavender Sugar
*Lemon Lime Sugar
*Sugared Ginger Tea
*Wildflower Honey Lime
~Custom "flavors" are available for small or large orders with two days' notice.

Our Products

Our soaps are made with fresh raw goat's milk from our dairy lady, Vanilla Bean. From Nature With Love says "Goat’s milk is a natural emollient that helps soothe and moisturize the skin. It contains vitamins A, B6, B12 and E. Goat’s milk has 3 times more beta-casein than cow’s milk. Caseins are easily absorbed into the skin and allow for quick hydration of dry skin. The content of triglycerides, capric, caprylic and caproic acid helps balance the skin’s natural pH and promotes natural exfoliation of dry skin."

We make our soaps with only local and natural ingredients, most grown by us(herbs, flowers, fruit) or produced by our neighboring farms (beeswax, honey) or locally processed by our friends(coffee beans).

We only use the best quality animal fats in our soaps, along with vegetable fats such as coconut oil, canola and olive oil, or grape seed oil. Our soaps are made in small batches for the best quality possible.

Several of our neighboring farms grow loofahs, and we adore using those natural sponges in some of our soaps, so you get a scrubber inside the soap for one neat package.

We don't use plastic or synthetics in the packaging of our soaps. We (and the goats) enjoy the process of soap making and strive to carefully create the cleanest, gentlest, and most sustainable product possible. All our products are animal-friendly and carry the paw, claw, and hoof stamp of approval of all our farm critters.

~Available soaps~

(All of our soap bars are $3 each)

*Depending on the curing process, we have a different variety of soaps available each week/month. Please check with us to see what's ready on the curing racks!


At any given time we carry approximately twenty varieties of soap. Each of our batches starts with the same base, and "flavors" are added at the end of the soaping process. Custom "flavors" are always considered, and we can make those for you with a three week notice. We ship large quantities of soap to several stores in Georgia and Florida, and are equipped to handle large shower or wedding favor orders.


Soap Varieties: Apple, Apple Cinnamon, Oatmeal Honey, Oatmeal & Fruit, Almond Cookie, Cherry Almond Crisp, Clean Linen, Rosemary Pine, Rosemary Butter, Lavender, Mint tea, Lemongrass Lemon rind, Tangerine, Orange Zest, Chamomile, Coffee Cocoa, Chocolate Mint, Spruce, Pumpkin, and many more.


We also make small batches of pure glycerin soap speckled with locally grown herbs. Try that for your face.

 

We have recently added a new product for those of you who remember the way grandpa used to shave: our Sunset Pines goat's milk shaving soap kit. The kit comes to you with creamy eucalyptus or lavender shaving soap with a touch of natural clay for the easy slip which makes it a comfortable shave, and a lathering brush made of boar's hair.


We also offer a line of relaxing foot soak packets-made by us with the cleanest ingredients and dried herbs, with a touch of tea tree oil and peppermint essence for a truly rejuvenating soak.









 
 
 
 
 
 

 

To order any of these products, please contact us at 229.343.4918 or see us at the Wiregrass Farmers Market on Saturdays from 9-12, April through October.

*We ship to all 50 states. Local orders-you can pick up at the farm right after you pet the goats and feed them a treat!

The Goat Milking

If you happen to be passing by our place in the early evenings, you will most likely spot one or more of us with grain in a bucket, ipod in our pocket(our goats love 70's music!) and a milk bucket in hand.

Yes, we are headed out to milk the dairy goat, Vanilla Bean. And yes, we do realize it's a rare sight in our neck of the woods so we don't mind the cars slowing down to watch.

Vanilla Bean is a Saanen, one of the best dairy breeds. Every spring since we have had Vanilla she has had a baby, which of course triggers the start of her lactation season. Meat goats will nurse their babies and make exactly as much milk as the babies need. Not the case with dairy goats-they way overdo it.

Over the last seven months Vanilla the dairy machine has produced at least one gallon of milk per night, and up to two. (That's a lot.)

How do we milk? Goats are very much creatures of habit. Vanilla likes to be milked once a day, in the evening, around 5-6 pm. If we are late for a milking, she lets us know. She also lets the rest of the neighborhood know.

Milking her is easy-she knows the process and willingly participates. As soon as she sees us coming with her grain bucket, she jumps on her milking stand, waits for her food, and starts munching while we wash  her udder and begin the milking process.

While we do own a vacuum milker and some prefer using it, our favorite way of milking Vanilla is by hand. We believe it is a lot gentler on her, and it takes approximately a third of the time that vacuum- milking takes. Also, it is old-school and nostalgic and calming and hippie, in so many ways. Which is so us.

Once the milk has been gathered in the immaculately clean stainless steel bucket, we immediately filter it, bottle it in sterilized glass jars, and store it in he refrigerator. Some milk we freeze immediately and keep in reserve for soap making or cheese making outside of the lactation season. Most of the milk that's left is turned into cheese-anything from soft herbed chevre to mozzarella to panir-the recipes are countless. We enjoy the cheeses we make tremendously, and love taking them to potlucks and dinner parties. The leftover milk is a favorite treat for our four dogs, so is the whey from the cheese making process.

To those always asking us about purchasing this beautiful milk, please note that in our state the sale of raw milk for consumption is prohibited unless licensed and sold as "pet food". So is the sale of fresh cheese made with raw milk(unless aged for 60 days).