FARMINGTON – Joanne Gorey has a purpose for the 30 goats she keeps on her 10-acre farm in Anson. Some are Nubian goats raised for milk and dairy products while others are South African Boer goats used for meat, she said.

Between waiting on customers Friday at the Sandy River Farmers Market, Gorey shared her thoughts on eating goat meat as more people are starting to do.

“It’s the new lean red meat that has the healthy fats,” she said, testifying to her own reduction in cholesterol levels. “I can’t eat red meat but this one I can,” she added.

But, Gorey isn’t in the market to sell meat. She’s found her own niche in her creations of goat milk soap and natural body products like lip balm, deodorant and lotion sticks.

With an abundant supply of goat milk, Gorey started researching ways to use it after purchasing the farm in 2002.

“It took a couple years to learn before getting into it,” she said. But a friend made soap and Gorey had a chance to buy her supplies. So started A Page-N-Thyme Soap Co.

Now in her fourth year, she has 50 different soap scents available using the goat milk that moisturizes and nourishes skin in a healthy way, she said.

Starting with the milk in the kitchen of her farm, there’s a lye process, then scents and other natural ingredients such as pumice, oatmeal, and honey from her own beehives are added to some bars.

“It takes chemistry determining how much of different wax and oils to use,” she said, of the products completed on the farm. “I make everything myself including cutting cloth wrappers for each bar of soap, brochures and wrappers.”

Goat’s milk contains more than 50 nutrients that help revitalize and nourish dehydrated skin, she said after one customer returned for more soap saying she liked the softness of her skin after using the goat milk bar.

Gorey refrains from using water and glycerin in the bars that keeps them from disintegrating and usable down to the smallest sliver, she said.

The mess of a spilled bottle of lotion in her purse sent her in search of a solid form of lotion, she said. Scented lotion sticks were created to just rub on to the skin as well as an all-natural deodorant and a variety of lip balms.

With a husband who travels a lot for work, she decided she needed something that was hers, she said. The farm with a few pigs, calves and chickens are her work but making and selling the goat milk products is “my passion,” she said.

“Oil painting is my hobby but I don’t have time for it now … this is still creating …,” she added.

Gorey not only sells at the Farmington farmers market on Fridays but is also now at the Kingfield market on Wednesdays, the Waterville market on Thursdays and the Skowhegan market on Saturdays. She has also developed a Web site, www.apagenthymesoap.com, and continues to update it with her products, she said.