A Soap Worth Bleating About

Australians are known for our knockabout nicknames, but for one Clarence Town woman, her nickname has now consumed her identity. And it’s a load of suds..

Kristine Boland is the Goat Soap Lady. She loves her goats. She hand milks her goats. And she turns that milk into soap. Up to 600 bars a day in fact. It’s almost an accidental success story. “I was just raising kids and living on the farm, then a neighbour gave me a bar of goat milk soap for my cracked hands, so I experimented a bit making a few batches and then it snowballed,” says Kristine.

Initially, she named the business after their 15-acre property, ‘Sunset Farm’, on the outskirts of Clarence Town overlooking Glen William, but then people began referring to her as ‘the goat soap lady’. “My friends even call me Goaty. I wish I had thought of it five years earlier, it’s so catchy, it just makes sense,” laughs Kristine.

The name does seem apt for a woman who has loved goats since childhood. “I grew up on a farm at Bell in Queensland. My Dad milked my neighbour’s goats and ever since then I have loved them, in fact being able to own goats was one of the reasons I wanted to move back to the country…”

Read more in the Edition 71 of Hunter & Coastal Lifestyle Magazine

Story and Images Penny Evans.