Farm and Soap Updates — soap making

Soap has existed since before recorded history, though if you read my short history of soap and hand washing, you know that using soap for hygiene practices like hand washing is less than 200 years old. But did you know that using soap for household cleaning like laundry, dishes and mopping is also relatively recent?  For most of that history, soap was far from the ubiquitous cleanser that it is today. Before soap, most households used dry cleaning methods like sweeping and brushing for the majority of tasks. Greasy chores like laundry and dishes were accomplished with wood ash, to make...

A History of Soap and Hand Washing Who invented soap? Frankly, we will never know because soap has been around for a very long time. As in a 'before recorded history' long time! The first time soap does show up in the historical record is 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia [1]. Historically, soap was first used to clean textiles and dishes rather than people. Some cultures thought it might have medical properties for the skin but at this point we're a long way from any understanding of germ theory. Even the idea of being "clean" was motivated more by religion than...

I usually find myself answering this question from two perspectives. Either, "Is soap really necessary?" or "Is soap enough?" So let's have a quick look at the chemistry of how soap really works. At its core, what soap really does is to make water a better cleanser. By itself, water does an ok job at removing dirt. Think about trying to get dirt off your hands with a dry paper towel or by rinsing with water. Water does a much better job!  But now think about washing your hands with either a dry soap bar or soap combined with water, the dry...

This is a bit of a niche topic today but I do get questions about using my soap in outdoor situations such as camping, outdoor bathing or even just in the backyard. The usual question is whether my soaps are biodegradable. The short answer is yes, they are. However, just because something is biodegradable does not mean that it is environmentally safe in all contexts. What does biodegradable mean? In the context of soap, biodegradable simply means that all of its components can be broken down by bacteria. Many ingredients found in commercial soaps and detergents can be environmentally harmful,...

I started experimenting with deodorant recipes almost ten years ago. While I've adjusted the ingredients over the years, mainly to help it tolerate the hotter summer temperatures it may encounter when being shipped outside of Vermont, the shape has remained the same. As you might have guessed, Farmer Pits is indeed poured into cupcake trays. The advantages to this are cost (even in bulk, deodorant tubes are expensive!) and minimal waste (just a paper wrapper to throw out, not a big chunk of plastic).  Now the disadvantages. One is purely aesthetics, when I sell my products in person at a...