About

Cats’ View Farm is located in the beautiful Hudson Valley in upstate New York. We are on the east side of the Hudson River with a beautiful view of the Catskill mountains, hence our name-along with the truth that cats are our most favorite animal, but please don’t tell the goats! Currently, our farm is home to a horse, several donkeys, lots of goats and lots of cats! We do have hopes of adding several llamas to the mix this upcoming spring.

We started out in 2000 when we moved to Germantown. We always had horses, but this was our first opportunity to have them live on the same property as us. While I’ve had horses all of my life, my daughter someplace along the way, fell in love with goats! Our first goat was a birthday gift to my daughter from my mom. Not knowing what to do with a goat or anything about them, my daughter and I enrolled in the local 4-H Goat Club. 4-H is an awesome program that teaches kids much more then animal husbandry. While learning about goats and showing them, we bred our own goats. We learned about milking goats and making cheese. We had a lot of milk, so what to do? Make soap!

My first batch of soap was such a disaster, it still amazes me that I tried again…but I’m so happy that I did! I made a few more batches, let it cure, and found that I didn’t like it so much! I had used a recipe that I found on the internet. I thought I better start again, and learn about what different oils contribute each property to the soap. I made lots and lots of trial batches…blending oils so that my soap was what I want in a soap bar…creamy, lathers and a little bubbly. It took months of trials but I created a recipe that I believe produces a great bar of soap!

We started selling our soap at the local farmers market. My daughter and I would go every Saturday. We had fun and we sold soap! The response to our soap and later our lotion is wonderful! Each year our markets grew and in 2016, we moved our soap making out of our kitchen and into a “soap kitchen” we built in our garage.