If you’ve ever wanted to make your own soap from scratch, this easy cold process Bastille soap recipe is the perfect place to ...

Until around 1916, making soap at home was commonplace. Using wood or plant ashes and leftover animal fats, families produced their own soap for cleaning their clothes and themselves. During World War ...

SCOTT -- The first thing one learns when making soap is that there is a lot of stirring involved. And trickling. And waiting. And hoping not to blow anything up. But, boy, does it smell good. An eager ...

Today I put a thin layer of wood ashes over my vegetable garden, trusting that the potash will enrich the soil with the winter rains. Our Arkansas ancestors did the same thing, but generations of ...

So bear with me here. This column is eventually going to be about soap but I have to put it into a bit of perspective. A few weeks back Grant Robinson, who lives here in Garrard County, sent me some ...

Lye soap is made by boiling a mixture of lye (sodium hydroxide) and animal fats. Lye could be purchased, but most Arkansans seem to have made their own from wood ashes. Almost all the sources specify ...

Readers, this is the fourth of 12 basic homestead skills we’ll be presenting every month throughout 2019 from Kimberlee Bastien’s new book, 52 Homestead Skills. We invite you to join Kimberlee and her ...

In preparation for an upcoming summer event, the Smithsonian leads us through saponification, the chemical process of creating soap Piqued by the innovation, resourcefulness and ingenuity required in ...

Mary Rich looked like a masked stranger in her goggles, gloves and face mask last week at Huffines Trades Day. She was stirring a bowl carefully at an outside table. She was making lye soap. Lye soap ...

Susan Ryhanen, who creates Saipua’s specialty bars with her daughter at their farm in upstate New York, offers a step-by-step guide on how to reproduce their sudsy magic. By Alexa Brazilian Who would ...

Lye soap is made by boiling a mixture of lye (sodium hydroxide) and animal fats. Lye could be purchased, but most Arkansans seem to have made their own from wood ashes. Almost all the sources specify ...