Soaps are curing… now what?!?

My sister suggested/requested a soap subscription so I went with it. Make some soaps and see if anyone wants to sign up for a box. My little paper and pen list of interested people has reached the max for the amount of soaps I’ve created.

My goal was to get all five of the varieties of soaps created and cured before the September shipping deadline (self imposed deadline). The next boxes will go out in December (again, my idea) so I’ve been planning the types of soaps to create for those boxes. In the meantime, I’m stuck on how to wrap and package and design labels, etc.

Graphic design isn’t my forte. Neither is creating a subscription link. Neither is marketing. Neither is keeping the computer mouse safe from little fingers apparently because we just had to order another one. But the big goal, getting the soaps made-that’s done. Now to work on the other parts of this little business.

Excuses? Maybe. Fear of failure? Quite possibly. Feeling like a big fat imposter? Sometimes. Pushing through all of it to get these first boxes of soaps shipped out in September? Hopefully!

XO,

Melissa

Misconceptions

A friend of mine came over the other day to discuss a few chapters of a book we’ve been reading together. I’m not sure exactly how or why our conversation happened but it came to my attention that I needed to clear up a few things. My sweet friend was under the impression that I was doing all of these amazing things in my life like taking awesome field trips with my kids and making soap and who knows what else. She was under the impression that my life was a fairy tale and I had it all together or something hilarious like that.

She saw my post about taking my kids to see that old house and somehow that looked like a field trip of a historical tour of the town when in reality it was one of the first times I’d been out of my house since Tupelo was born and my mom was in town and helped me with everything. The old house was literally 2 blocks from the market so we walked over and looked around for 15 minutes. No biggie.

 

As far as being a soap maker. That’s hilarious. I’ve made 3 batches of soap. One was yesterday and it’s orange because of the unrefined (sustainably sourced) palm oil that I used to attempt to discover a recipe that makes a basic bar that I can be proud to put my stamp on. Frankly, the first two batches work but aren’t exactly trunk show worthy and I sort of prefer ivory soap over them at this point. After mistaking rendered chicken fat for beef tallow I was a little shy to try any more for a while. But, I ordered another mold and got to work yesterday on a new trial recipe and I’m already certain that it’s not the one. The point is that I’m not a soap maker even if I posted a few photos of some soap that I made a few months ago.

I made some kombucha yesterday. The last batch had zero fizz. Zero. Before that batch I hadn’t made any in over a year. However, I was inspired by some refreshment I enjoyed at another friend’s house during a walk I took a few weeks ago (the only walk I’ve been on in weeks) and my friend (the same one who came over for ‘mom club’) gave me a scoby hotel so I needed to make some kombucha. I haven’t posted any photos lest anyone think that I’m super woman who takes her kids on field trips twice a day while letting her homemade soap cure on fancy shelves as she sips organic kombucha and listens to her kids recite the Declaration of Independence.

first soap batch and mistake

Years ago, when Andy and I first met he asked me if I wanted to see his soap. This was after he showed me his bee hives, garden and chicken coop. I’m sure I answered something like, ‘Really? You make soap? That’s so cool, I’ve always wanted to make soap. That’s really fascinating. Of course I want to see your soap.’ I did think it was cool and fascinating and I did want to make my own soap, but I just couldn’t believe I’d been invited to see another layer of my (unbeknownst to me) future husband’s many gifts and creative talents.

So, I saw his soap stash and his lip balms and essential oils (I think that was all in the same cabinet) and was really impressed. The soap wasn’t pretty. It didn’t make awesome suds and occasionally it didn’t cure long enough so the lye would completely burn your skin off and it left a terrible residue in the bath tub, but I was still smitten with soap and chickens and bee hives and eventually the urban farmer who considered himself nothing of the sort but, really enjoyed all of those farmy things and is now full time farming with me and our brood and my new found love of soap making. That’s right! 7 years or so after that day I walked in and saw his soapbox I have finally finally finally made my first batch of soap.

It is so fresh that I can’t use it yet and won’t know how it suds or cleans or works for at least another month, because it needs to cure, but it’s beautiful and with the exception of the lye and the natural fragrance oil it is made from ingredients that we produce here on the farm like goat milk and beef tallow and another fat that I’m too embarrassed to talk about right now, because it was a complete accident but is actually a legitimate ingredient used for soap making. I just thought it was beef tallow but it wasn’t. So, my first bars will be quite interesting and remind me of the time a chicken toe was left in the collard greens that we ate for Thanksgiving with my family one year. We can laugh about it now, because we know that chicken feet make excellent stock, but at the time Andy quickly put the toe in a napkin and I made him keep quiet so my sisters wouldn’t find out.

Back to the soap: I only made a half batch to experiment and I used a basic recipe from Mother Earth News, substituting the water in the recipe with some frozen goat milk  that I had on hand when there was a surplus of goat milk and no one to consume it. I used the lye calculator from Brambleberry (a big soap making supplier/company), got my supplies together and went for it while Andy and the kids were down at the river and hunting for arrowheads.

It looks and smells great and I didn’t even realize my accidental tallow mistake until we were sitting down to dinner and I told Andy that I didn’t have enough tallow in the freezer and had to melt it and strain it before using so it would be really clean and he said, ‘honey that’s not tallow. The tallow is all in the crock in the barn.’ I was hysterically laughing about my first batch and big mistake until I quickly looked at the lye calculator and lo and behold my crazy ingredient is completely legitimate and apparently popular enough to be listed as an official soap fat option. Let’s just say that if this soap turns out to be the best of all my future experiments, including the ones I’m going to try with olive and coconut oils and beeswax then I’m going to have to render a lot more chicken fat.

XO.