This has been a long time in coming. As I told you before, I have talking about making homemade soap for years. Classes, books, You-tube videos, and assorted supply purchases were made but none of them were enough to push me over the edge. I have no idea what was holding me back. Fear of failure is the only thing I can think of. Which is silly when I think about it.   After all, Ron, Jo and I took a huge chance and bought a farm three years ago. How could soap making be any scarier than that?

Christmas 2017 was the game changer. My amazing friend Josi made me a soap cutter.  This is something that anyone who makes soap really does need.   We have watched dozens of people make soap on You Tube and only a very few of them can hand cut their soap into even slices.  And most of them graduated into a cutter anyway.

This is the cutter Josi made for me.  So very cool.  And she told me that she was going to come over and make soap with me.  There was no waffling I could do this time.

I had already started infusing olive oil with calendula flowers.  This is a very cool medicinal herb that offers so many benefits for your skin with its anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties.   Takes a good month for proper long infusion to take place so early planning is necessary.  And you can infuse a range of oil types.  I have calendula in jars of olive, grapeseed and coconut oil all steeping in our family room.

When we bought our house, we did not think about the orientation to the sun.  We don’t get much sunshine during the morning hours and then only through the front windows in afternoon.  That makes it difficult to set up a secure table for my jars.  Especially with two active cats in the house.  Right now I am using the heat from our wood stove to gently warm the oil.  Too hot and I will kill off the benefits.   As my first batch of oil would be ready on Jan 19th that was our target date for soap making and we settled on Feb. 3.  When Josi asked me what time she should arrive.  I said – early.  She needed clarification;  did I mean regular early, or Delaney early?  Regular early would be fine so the plan was for her to arrive at 8:30 am.

There is a lot of equipment needed for soap making.  Scale, pot, oils, lye, molds, thermometers, wand mixer, gloves, long sleeve shirts and glasses.  Then there are the extras.  Ron wants our soap to have calendula “flecks” showing, but I decided no essential oils would be added to this batch.

We started by mixing the lye into the “calendula tea” I had previously made.  This was the only dangerous part of the process as lye is very caustic and the mixture gets very hot.   I used a large plastic pitcher for this.  I like the idea of higher side to lesser risk of splashing.   Once that was set aside we started mixing together the oils and warming them up.  The temps of both lye and oils need to be around 100 degrees.

That was the biggest chunk of time, waiting for the temps to balance.   Once that happened, things speeded up.  I carefully poured the lye into the oils and Josi started mixing it together.  In less than 10 minutes we had what is called trace and our soap was ready to pour.  I added calendula leaves and poured our mixture into the mold.

The recipe we used fit nicely into the mold I bought.  Now we had to wait until Monday when I take the loaf into work with me along with my cutter and we give it a try.  I was so excited, I did a happy dance once an hour all weekend.

I arrived at work with a bag full of soap stuff.  The soap, the cutter, my background material, camera, parchment paper and a few nerves.  Josi and I used one of our break times to get everything set up and slice our soap into pieces.  She had do to a quick repair as one and then two of the wires snapped as they were tightened.  But the darn thing worked.

We ended up with seven slices.  And discovered that the lady who provided the cutter directions must like chunky soap.  Both of us decided that they were just too thick for our tastes.  And that next time I needed to chop up the calendula flowers.  They were just too big and ended up leaving actual holes in the soap.   But not bad for my first attempt.  Of course I won’t know what the soap is like until it has cured, in about 4 weeks.   When I got home with it, I cut each piece in half so I have thinner slices.  I didn’t think it through ahead of time, so my pieces are nowhere near evenly cut.  This soap will be handed out to our local test subjects, so looks don’t matter that much.  This time.

By June we have to have some seriously nice looking soap for us to sell.  More practicing is  needed and a few tweaks to our recipe.  Ron is already working on our label.  It is good that he gets to use his graphic designer skills for us.  And it is very nice for me to have something exciting to work on.  While I have no problem and, really lots of interest in getting our mushrooms bolts ready each year, I have to say they are not my thing.  I don’t even eat them.  So soap, lotion and salve making will keep me busy, happy and interested in the farm.  All in all, a very good thing.  But then I start thinking about elderberry jam, lavender sachets, and juneberry whatever and have to wonder if I will have enough time for even half of it.  Especially as I have to blog about everything we do.  My organization skills are going to need sharpening.  It is a good thing that I like to make lists.