We use fresh local ingredients whenever possible - the honey in all our shampoo bars and oatmeal soaps is our own raw honey from our beehives. I source our lard from a local farm that raises their pigs ethically on pasture, fed local non-GMO grains and all the sunshine and grass they want. Our tallow is either our own, from our herd of Scottish Highland cattle, or from the same small farm which also raises Red Devon cattle. Both herds are grass-fed and grass-finished, pastured their whole lives, with only minimal and life-saving medical or pharmaceutical interventions. Both the lard and tallow are hand-rendered here, for the freshest possible local ingredients!

Animal fats like tallow and lard - as well as lanolin and emu oil - have multiple benefits. Physiologically, they are a better match for our skin sebum, and are much less allergenic/sensitivity-causing, than plant oils. They are also ethically better for the environment in several ways - our lard and tallow are sourced locally, so there is virtually no carbon footprint for transporting them, unlike having coconut oil or shea butter shipped from Asia or Africa. Secondly, lard and tallow are waste materials and would likely end up in a landfill - by rendering them into healthy ingredients for soaps and salves, we can reduce un-necessary waste.

Handmade soap is so wonderful for skin because a good recipe with quality ingredients will result in a bar containing roughly 1/3 glycerin! Glycerin is a natural humectant, meaning it pulls water out of the air, so your skin will literally be drawing natural moisture into your skin. The soap-making process naturally creates both soap and glycerin - but in commercial soap, the glycerin is removed, the remaining pure soap is, of course, drying to skin, and so the glycerin is sold to you as lotion, that you so desperately need for your dry skin!

Quite honestly, because folks want it! Full disclosure, I’m not sure goat milk makes a better soap than a really good recipe would have any way. I think the renowned quality of goat milk soap may be largely because, simply put, it is a high-quality handmade soap made with high-quality ingredients. That being said, the exception to this is that, in general, goat milk soaps are made by substituting the typical water in a recipe with goat milk. Since the amount of superfat (extra fat included for moisturizing) is calculated assuming water is used, then the rich fat in the goat milk raises the superfat a bit, resulting in a slightly richer bar. Also, goat milk does contain a number of vitamins that are wonderful for skin - although I have seen no research on whether or not those actually survive the soapmaking process! Without any actual data, I am not going to make claims (as many soapmakers do) that the lactic acid in goat milk is still a gentle exfoliant after the soaping, or that the vitamin A present in goat milk is still present in the soap, so it’s basically putting retinol on your skin. All I can say for sure is that there is no reason not to use goat milk in my soap, and many possible reasons (just unproven) to do it, so I do!

Lye is in all true soap because, simply, it is required to make soap! Soap is, at its basis, a 2 part equation: oils/fats + lye/liquid solution = soap + glycerin. This is a complete chemical reaction - the lye breaks down the oils into their individual fatty acid molecules, and re-forms them as the substances “soap” and “glycerin”. Because of this total transformation, there is no longer any lye in soap - it is all consumed in turning the oils into soap and glycerin! Just to be sure, my soap is all calculated to have 5-10% extra fats so that there is a less-than-zero chance of any unused lye remaining.

Essential oils (EOs) are the volatile oils derived from plants that are responsible for their scent. These are distilled from actual plant material, commonly flowers, bark or resin. These are often considered healthier since they are natural, but it is more nuanced than that. Some folks are sensitive or allergic to some or all essential oils (please note, using EOs undiluted can sensitize you to them, and you may suddenly and ever-after break out in a rash on contact!) so a fragrance oil may actually be better suited for them.

Fragrance oils are synthetic, not naturally occurring. Flavor oils fall under this term as well, being simply fragrances that have been deemed safe to ingest for lip use.

I use both as there are many scents that just don’t exist in an essential oil - for example oatmeal, honey, fig, coconut, mango, even vanilla do not have essential oils. For all my products, I list the essential oil options first with the designation EO and then the fragrance options with FO.

If your tallow salve is at all soft upon arrival pop it straight into the freezer for an hour or so before unwrapping, even the packaging if it is very soft. Once it is re-set, it will remain firm at normal room temperatures, and be much easier to handle!

Quality pure tallow will last for weeks at room temperature, but will eventually go a bit sour, and then finally rancid after a few months depending on storage conditions. The best way to extend its life is to freeze or refrigerate it. If this is not an option, then cool and out of direct light is best. If you are cooking with tallow, I highly recommend biscuits with tallow grated straight out of the freezer, substituted for the butter!

If you plan to make a product with it such as a balm, know that shelf-stable additives like beeswax or cocoa butter will prolong its life indefinitely. My 50% tallow balms are shelf-stable for years! I have also found that synthetic fragrance oils will help prevent rancidity for months to years even in heavy-tallow products (my 80 %tallow salves) but essential oils do not seem to help. Please let me know if you have any questions about your tallow!

To start a custom order, just contact me with what you’re interested in! We will discuss the possibilities, from ingredient substitution to a scent I don’t have listed, to a fully customized recipe. Soaps have a 4-8 week make-time, while “poured” products (balms, lip balms, salves, candles, deodorants) are ready in a few days. Soaps have a minimum order of 10-12 bars, with no surcharge for the custom work. Poured products have a minimal surcharge for simple customizations like a different scent, size, etc, but may have a minimum order size for more complicated changes. For example, an alteration like a lip balm with jojoba oil instead of castor oil will require me to make a special base that I may not ever use again, and to pour a single lip balm cleanly I have to make enough base for at least 2 of them. Therefore, I may request a minimum order of several lip tubes, to avoid potentially wasted ingredients.

We try to upcycle, recycle, and reuse here at Solace Farm! I wrap most of my soap in simple brown paper bands, hand-cut from our duck-feed sacks, and the origami boxes for my small soaps are also cut from feed-sack paper and folded by hand. All our packing materials are collected from local friends and businesses - we cut the large cardboard boxes down into smaller ones, so even the shipping boxes are often handmade! I may use plastic bubble wrap (unless you request plastic-free packing) but rest assured it is 100% up-cycled re-used plastic! We also rely heavily on shredded paper we make ourselves, again from the paper feed sacks.

I also try to only print packing slips on the backs of the sheets from our product labels, and I actually use all those sheets produced by 3 other farms as well! The easiest way to avoid single-use waste is simply to use things at least one more time.