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 ...

Did you know that instead of discarding the ashes from your fireplace, you can actually use them to make an ingredient for a ...

The perfect bar of soap can be made right at home and is crafted with the natural, nourishing ingredients your skin craves. One of the easiest ways to make DIY soap is with the co ...

Soap-makers love to tell the story of how ancient Romans first “discovered” soap by burning animal sacrifices on Mount Sapo, and how the creeks at the bottom of that mythological mountain were the ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Martha’s Health Foods and Herbs at 215 W. Kenosha St. used to sell lye soap produced by a family living in eastern Oklahoma until the family simply stopped making it. “About 15 years ago,” said Kathy ...

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 ...