Photo Story: A morning with a soap maker

A small business in a small home

Photo Essay by Hanna Rhody

East of Eden Farm, located just outside of downtown Bellingham, is home to a lively community of folks who are passionate about organic farming and sustainability. Over the last couple of years, the farm has rented out land to a number of folks living in tiny homes. One of the farm’s current residents, Em Blood, lives in a tiny house that she built with her partner during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The couple’s goal was to transition to a more off-grid, sustainable lifestyle while avoiding paying so much in rent. The home is set up to accommodate solar panels, runs fully off of propane and wood for heating, and is even equipped with a composting toilet.

Blood runs a soap business right out of her home. Anyone who enters the tiny house is greeted by aromas of fresh cedar, sage, and whatever other ingredients were used in her latest batch. Blood’s soap-making journey began first as a personal quest to create soap for herself, without irritating ingredients like palm oil or artificial fragrances. She started by giving a few bars away to friends and family, who loved them so much they wanted to buy more. Blood’s unexpected side gig grew so much that she eventually began selling her soaps at various markets and farm stands along with produce from her own small market farming business, Sonder Farmstead.

“I’ve never considered myself an artist,” Blood said. “So it’s fun having something like this to make.”

Blood grows all of the herbs used in her soaps herself on her farm plot at Cloud Mountain Farm in Everson.

Soap Cutting — Step by Step

Each batch of soap is poured into block molds, which must sit for at least 24 hours. Blood is in the process of creating 800 fresh bars of soap to start off the coming market season. She sells to a few different markets, including the Bellingham Farmers Market, Twin Sisters Farmers Market, and, more recently, the Fremont Market in Seattle. She also sells to a couple of shops in town.

Once the soap has solidified, the bars can be removed from the rubber mold.

Bevel the edges. The edges of the new bar often come out sharp and uneven, so Blood uses a vegetable peeler to smooth them out.

Align the bar with the soap cutter. Blood started out by cutting her soaps with a regular knife, then upgraded to a cheese slicer, and now owns an actual soap cutter, which slices the entire block into individual bars at once.

Now the soap can be cut into individual bars. The soap cutter is crafted using guitar strings that can easily slice through the soap. Blood makes sure to clean the strings after each block goes through, in order to make sure all the bars come out even.

Let the newly cut soap bars solidify. This process is otherwise known as ‘saponifying.’ In order to avoid clutter in the tiny home, there is a carefully thought-out space for everything, even the bars of soap. Blood hops up on the counter to place the newly cut bars on a shelf above.

Leave the soap to cure. The longer soap is left to cure, the longer it will last. Blood leaves her soap on the shelf for at least a month before labeling it to be sold. Then, she’s off to the market!