There was once a time when people made soap by hand. They would make lye from wood ash, mix it with water and animal fat, and boil it over an open fire. The process was hot and time-consuming, and pioneers would only do it in large batches once or twice a year. People used this process to make their own soap until it was largely replaced by commercial soap in the 20th century, and the art of home-made soap gradually disappeared. However, there are some who still practice the art of soap-making, preserving this piece of history in every bar they make. Patricia Fielding of Idaho Falls is one of those people.
In 1996, Fielding was looking for an easy way to supplement her income and support her seven children. One day she found herself in a ceramics shop. As she was leaving, she noticed a basket of rough-cut, hand-made bars of soap and decided to buy one for decoration. She wrapped it in raffia and put it in her bathroom, and there it sat for a couple years until, one day, she decided to use it.
“It felt different,” Fielding says. “I thought it was going to be wimpy, but it wasn’t.” She knew she wanted more, but that that bar of soap would run out eventually. She decided she would find out how to make soap by hand and enjoy that unique, old-time feeling again and again.
Rediscovering the art of soap-making was not an easy process, especially since there are so many ways to do it. The pioneers made a soft soap by boiling ash lye and refined animal fat over an open fire, but Fielding wanted a hard bar soap, which takes a little more time and effort. “I did some trial and error,” she recalls. “I made some goop, I made some stuff that was not pretty at all, and then I finally figured out how to do it.”
Whether it’s hard bar soap, soft pioneer soap, or liquid hand soap, the basic ingredients remain the same – oils and lye. Pioneers used refined animal fat called tallow, but any oil will do. The combination of oils determines the qualities of the soap. Each one will contribute its own characteristic, whether it makes more lather or whether it makes the bar harder or softer.
The other ingredient, lye, comes in many forms as well. Pioneers mixed wood ash with water. Wood ash contains potassium hydroxide, which modern soap-makers use today. Patricia prefers using sodium hydroxide for her bar soap, but both will make lye. Patricia says lye has a bad reputation because it’s a dangerous caustic. It can cause skin rashes and even first or second-degree burns if left in contact with skin for too long.
Fielding starts by mixing the lye and oil mixture in a stainless steel pot over constant heat, just as the pioneers did. “The kids hated it, because you’d have to stir for 45 minutes to an hour,” she says with a laugh. Sometimes she’d get her local Cub Scout troop to help out. “They can each stir for about five minutes, and by the time the whole pack got done stirring soap, it’d be done,” she says.
Once the soap begins to harden, it’s poured it into molds, and the soap itself does the rest. Mixing lye and oils begins a chemical reaction that generates its own heat, so as long as it’s insulated inside the mold, it will cook itself.
Once the soap hardens in the mold, it can be cut into bars and set on shelves to finish drying. After a few weeks, it’s ready to be used – or, as Fielding found, packaged and sold to stores across the country. It turns out she wasn’t the only one who thought hand-made soap was something special. She gave a few bars to her neighbors, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. “One neighbor said, ‘My husband really likes this stuff, I’d like to buy a whole bunch from you,’” she says.
She researched how much it would cost and where she could get supplies and decided to give it a try. In December of 1997, she borrowed $300, made several hundred bars of soap, and set up a booth at a local craft fair. Before the second day had ended, she’d sold every bar she’d made and went home with orders for more. She was able to pay off her debt and make a $350 profit. She used that money to buy more materials, and in January of 1998, she opened her own soap company, Rainy Creek Soap, which specializes in hand-made soap.
The interest in her soap extended well beyond Idaho Falls. “My very first ever customer was the Mangy Moose in Jackson, Wyoming,” Fielding says. “They just have a standing order of ‘x’ number of bars per every other week.” Most of her sales are to gift shops, where people from all over can find her hand-made soap and discover what she found at that ceramic shop in ‘96.
Fielding’s product line has expanded beyond hand-crafted bars of soap. She now makes lotions, lip balm, body butters, and bath salts, all of it by hand. She has since improved her methods to meet increasing demands for her products. In the early days, she made 24-bar batches with a small stainless steel pot, a few plastic-lined cardboard boxes, and a homemade soap cutter. Now she can make batches of 900 bars at a time using a large steel vat, specialized molds, and large soap cutters. She has improved her formula as well, reducing the average cook time to 20 minutes, which allows her to make more soap in less time. Still, the process is basically the same as it was a hundred years ago, and her soap sometimes sells faster than she can get it off the drying rack.
Most of all, though, she has renewed a connection with her pioneer ancestors of old. Though she may not compete with the large companies, her product has found its place in the hearts of those who recognize in her hand-made soap something special.
No comments:
Post a Comment