Milk a Goat and Make Great Soap!

October 18th, 2025

Learn hands-on how to milk a goat and how to make cold process soap.

Class is three hours from 11 am to 230pm with a thirty-minute lunch break (farm fresh cheese plate provided)

Includes: all materials, a light lunch, and three pieces of farm-made goat's milk soap.

Cost: $85 (only 8 tickets available)

This is an introductory class for anyone who has ever been curious about what it’s like to be doing the happy homestead thing of making goat’s milk soap. To most folks, both milking a goat and making cold-process soap are intimidating tasks; we will demystify both and have fun while we do it. This class is a broad overview with a hands-on opportunity to milk a goat and craft a batch of soap out of the milk. There is a “classroom part” with an overview of dairy goat keeping and soap making, as well as some take-home materials to keep you going on your own soap-making journey.

Making your own soap makes sense - it results in the best soap you could buy with total control over the choice of ingredients, oils, colors, and scents. One batch of soap can last a normal household a year- not bad for a few hours of effort!

Included in the class:

Hands-on experience of goat milking and the basics of what it takes to keep a goat happy and healthy.

Overview of cold process soap making and the tools and ingredients required.

Participation in the making of a batch of cold process soap with the milk we previously milked!

We will break for refreshments and serve a cheese plate of our goat’s milk cheeses and hot beverages.

All materials are provided, including instructional take-home materials.

Each participant will receive three pieces of the soap, to be picked up at the farm or at

one of our farmers' markets after they have started to cure (one week out).

Fraga Farmstead has been licensed Animal Welfare Approved since 2019. We milk 72 very happy goats, turning the milk into a wide range of delicious cheeses, treats, soaps, and more!

Fraga Farmstead Creamery is located in Gales Creek Valley, a tributary of the Tualatin River, half an hour west of Portland. We share the valley with vineyards, orchards and other organic farms and look forward to farm to table dinners with locally sourced produce.

We believe farming is a collaboration between soil, plant animal, and human animal. We practice what we call “herd-first farming”. Our kids are raised by their goat mothers with some assistance from us as needed. We do not cull or butcher our goats or sell them for meat at auction. Our old goat ladies retire - either here with us or in encore careers as pasture pets and brush slayers. Each spring bucklings (little boy goats) become available for adoption.

Every day of their lives the goats have access to pasture and forage, in the spring and summer we rotate them through our mixed pond meadow.

Our Process

The goats graze on pasture every day. In the summer, much of their intake is grazing. In the winter fresh Douglas Fir bark and greens make for a tasty and nutritious treat! In the barn, they munch on certified organic alfalfa.

All of the does raise their kids—it’s what they yearn to do and need to do to stay happy and healthy. Our goats naturally produce more milk than the kids need. The kids only drink around 15% of the milk their moms produce.

Our Ingredients

Check out our ingredients page to learn about each ingredient - why we chose it and where we source it!

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Our Never Ever List

We also have a Never Ever List: a list of ingredients that we would never ever put into one of our farm's products! No parabens, no phthalates, no propylenes no mineral oils, and no petrolatum. No mica, no fragrance oils, and no flavors or colors that are not botanicals!

Check out the Never Ever List for details on all those things that are common in other cosmetic products but we that we don’t want in our farm products!

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