Adventures in Soap-Making
And what I learned from craft fairs
When I first moved to Arkansas, my brother-in-law and I started a side hustle of making and selling soap. At first, this was just an excuse to buy goats. He could then tell his wife (my twin sister), “Yes, we do need another goat. We need more goat milk for all that soap we’re gonna make.”
Our brand name was Beulah Acres. Our logo was a picture of our goat Bernadette. Eventually, we also began making hemp oil soap and beer soap as a way of reaching a wider customer base. We sold our soap at craft fairs and farmer’s markets. We enjoyed it, which is a good thing because we also lost money doing it. Making soap is expensive and strangely competitive.
We had a marketing spiel for each type of soap — what they contained, what their benefits were, that sort of thing. My brother-in-law had a hard time remembering the various attributes, so halfway through I often got called over to tell the customer why the goat milk soap was best for anti-aging or why we recommended the hemp oil soap for people with eczema (at which point, the customer would show me the rash in question — as if I needed to see it to be sure that hemp oil soap was the best option). My brother-in-law’s mother helped us with a couple of craft fairs, but we eventually realized the claims kept getting bigger the more she repeated them. We had to start intercepting customers so she wouldn’t tell them our soap would cure cancer.
Each soap tended to appeal to a definite demographic. The hemp oil soap appealed to our oldest customers and our youngest customers (especially those who dressed in a more bohemian style). The group most likely to be disappointed at the news they couldn’t get high off our soap were women over age sixty-five — including my own mother. Sorry, Mama. Didn’t mean to let you down.
The beer soap appealed to men. They were almost universally disappointed that they couldn’t get drunk off it. (Have you ever tasted soap? It’s pretty awful. Wouldn’t it be better to just go drink a beer?) Some also expressed disappointment that it didn’t smell like beer. Because, apparently, there are men out there who want to step out of the shower smelling like a frat house. For those who wanted the authentic, I-slept-in-a-puddle-of-beer experience, we recommended our Swayze bar. It was unscented beer soap made with Pabst Blue Ribbon. We named it Swayze because of this utterly ridiculous commercial from 1979:
We had trouble keeping Swayze in stock. Men loved it. It almost smelled a little beery. Women who were shopping for the men in their lives were more likely to buy them soap with names like “Ruggedly Handsome.” But what men really wanted was Swayze (or soaps with names like “Big Muddy Monster”).
I can’t tell you how often I heard people refer to our goat milk soap as “goat soap.” I found it disturbing. To be clear, the only part of the goat we used in our soap-making process was the milk.
Eventually, we started selling a bar we called “Old-Fashioned Lye Soap.” This was a little deceptive because all our soap was made with lye. In fact, soap that isn’t made with lye is not actually soap. It’s detergent. But the Old-Fashioned Lye Soap was also a best seller — and it was cheap to make. We used lard instead of more expensive oils, and we left it unscented. People who buy Old-Fashioned Lye Soap don’t want frills.
Eventually, it got hard to juggle soap-making and a full-time job. One day, I came home from work — a new, stressful job — and set about making a batch of our charcoal goat milk soap, a bar we called “Tropical Haze.” Tropical Haze was tricky because we had to split the batch and add charcoal to part of it. Then we’d swirl it together in the mold so that it came out looking like this:
Between steps, I needed to rinse the stick blender that I used to stir the charcoal mixture. The water alone wasn’t doing it — I needed to use my fingers to remove a glob of charcoal-infused soap. I was tired, too tired to be making soap. And, because I was tired and unfocused, I forgot to unplug the stick blender.
It happened so fast. Whirrrrr. My fingertip was washed down the drain.
“Hang on,” I said to my sister who was about to leave. “I need to go to the emergency room.” I held up my hand.
It looked worse than it was. The blender tore my glove in a way that made it look as if I had cut off half my finger. Really, it was just the meaty tip. No bone was involved. From the ER, I texted my brother-in-law to make sure he was going to finish that batch of Tropical Haze. I gave up a fingertip for that soap, after all.
Sometimes, I miss our soap-making days. Craft fairs were fun. Someday, we may try it again, maybe as more of a hobby than a business. It’s definitely a good way to meet some interesting characters. I haven’t purchased soap in years — we still have inventory. It’s getting low, however, so we’ll need to make some soap this spring. None of our goats will be in milk, so most likely we’ll make beer soap or, possibly, some Old-Fashioned Lye Soap. Maybe we’ll pick up some PBR and make a batch of Swayze. I’ll be sure to unplug the stick blender before I clean it.
