Farm and Soap Updates — soap making

I started experimenting with deodorant recipes almost ten years ago. While I've adjusted the ingredients over the years, mainly to help it tolerate the hotter summer temperatures it may encounter when being shipped outside of Vermont, the shape has remained the same. As you might have guessed, Farmer Pits is indeed poured into cupcake trays. The advantages to this are cost (even in bulk, deodorant tubes are expensive!) and minimal waste (just a paper wrapper to throw out, not a big chunk of plastic).  Now the disadvantages. One is purely aesthetics, when I sell my products in person at a...

I started writing this with intention of posting a short informative article about aluminum in deodorant. Several weeks and one deep hole of research later, here is the result. It is, I think, quite informative but alas, not short. If you'd like to skip the close examination of research, feel free to scroll right down to "Fear and Marketing." You can also take a look at the source list at the bottom, where I've noted a few articles which are fairly quick, easy reads and are from reputable sources. The rest of you, lets see if we can sort through...

Solid dish soap is a great way to reduce plastic waste in your home and is also quite economical. I always keep a bar by the sink with a dish brush for hand washing (please don't try to use it in your dishwasher!) As with most cleaning tasks, hot water works best. I wet the dish brush and then scrub it over the bar a few times to load it up with soap. Then I scrub the dirty item as I normally would, rinse and put on the drying rack. If you prefer the sink or basin full of soapy...

A question that I've been getting more and more frequently over the past few years is, "can I use your soap as shampoo?" I give the most honest answer I can, which is that I know many customers who use my soap as shampoo and it seems to work well for them. I actually feel pretty out of touch with the shampoo bar revolution, mainly due to the fact that, well, I don't use shampoo!  A Personal Hair Washing History Sometime back in the mid aughts I heard about an intriguing concept called the "no 'poo" method of hair washing....

I've been making our "Farmer Pits" Natural deodorant for about seven years now but it feels like it's only in the past 2-3 years that I've gotten the recipe really polished. In the early days I experimented with baking soda before discovering the amazing non-irritating and excellent odor eliminating properties of magnesium hydroxide. The most recent big change was switching from beeswax to candelilla wax a few years ago. The problem with beeswax was that as I used it at higher rates to try and keep the bar solid in hot summer temperatures, the bars started to feel very sticky...