Soap: What’s with the lye?

I cannot tell a lye… (I know, very punny, right? I couldn’t resist!)

I want to talk to you about lye soap. A lot of people hear farmers like me talking about our good old-fashioned lye soap, and their minds instantly picture a harsh, abrasive, chemical concoction used for tanning leather, stripping paint, and cleaning dirty words out of teenagers’ mouths.

Then those of us who choose sustainably raised oils, like lard, start talking about our lard soap, and I guess folks get the idea that they’re going to smell like a pork rind after bathing!

Neither is the case with our old-fashioned lard-lye soap!

All soap starts with fat and lye. Every single grease-cutting potion on the market, from bars to liquids to foam. You probably don’t have time for a chemistry lesson, so suffice it to say that all soap is made of a fat that has been chemically transformed (by lye) into this super-cool molecule that can grab ahold of grease particles and wash away cleanly in water. A well-made soap will contain no lye at all. It gets all used up in the (wait for it) saponification process (there’s your chemistry lesson!). When fat gets turned to soap, the catalyst is lye, and what is left is a beautiful bar of cleansing power, with unique characteristics based on the fats contained therein.

So how gentle could lard-lye soap be?

Well, here’s what one customer said about our soap:

“That soap is amazing. I would like to deem myself a natural soap expert due to me trying almost everyone I could find in the Tri-State area. Seriously, due to my allergies & skin irritations I can’t tolerate mainstream/big box stores soaps & body washes. I’ve hunted on the internet and every arts & crafts fair or outdoor markets for homemade, natural soaps around. And to be fair, I’ve found some decent ones, but there always seems to be a downside like drying out my skin, or the soap magically evaporates after two days. Oh and the best of all, the pretty ones have too much dye or coloring agent that defeats the purpose of being natural. Your soap far exceeded my expectation of moisture, lather & scent. My skin feels terrific!! I don’t have the dry, itchy feel by 11 o’clock after I take my morning shower. I am only 3 days into the use of the soap & I am ecstatic over the instant results on my skin. I finally feel moisturized!!! … I don’t think that I have EVER felt this big of a change in my skin in so little time… I have the same great results on my face. I am over-the-moon excited about this soap!!”

As a fun, stress-relief project (ha!), I have started making pretty gift labels for our soaps. If you’d like to gift bars as a gift, you can add the beautification factor before placing the soap in your cart.

But if you’re just stocking up so you can enjoy the benefits of pure lard soap, you can save money by going naked! (On the bar of soap, I mean!)

Happy ..er… washing! (And happy eating!)