Gearing Up For Soaping Season

The Goldendale Farmers Market Holiday Bazaar is held the first or second weekend of December. My cold process soap needs a minimum of 8 weeks to fully cure and be at it's best. So I need to be wrapping up my soaping by the first week of October. That means I have 1 month to get all of my soaping done. 

Yikes. 

Sammy went and got our supply of beef fat from some local friends a week ago. Then, over the course of a few days, he and Timothy spent hours cutting, grinding, and rendering the fat down, then straining and getting it in the fridge to harden.

The end result was multiple, beautiful tallow cakes! All totaled, I think I have about 50-55 pounds of tallow. Which is great, because each batch of soap I do is comprised of 50% tallow, which comes out to 1 pound in each batch. So I have plenty of tallow to do all the soaping I need.

Over this past weekend, I spent some time planning out my soaps. All totaled, I'll be doing 16 different Essential Oil soaps for my Natural Line, but will be doing double batches of 7 of them as I want to be sure to have plenty of my best sellers. I will also be doing 17 different Fragrance Oil soaps for my Non-Natural Line, with I think a few of them being double batches. When all those loaves are done, I'll probably do a few batches of massage bar soap, and a few batches of hand and foot scrub soap. So hopefully I'll have enough tallow for all of that! 

I've had my table all set up and ready to go for a few days now, haha. 

Finally time to start soaping!!! 

And check out my new pull-out soap curing shelves Sammy built me! They are in my laundry room. It was getting really difficult to have all the soap curing on my bookshelf and desk in my bedroom, so this will help a lot. I won't be able to fit ALL the soap here, so I'll still have to cure some elsewhere, but it'll be nice to not have tons of soap curing in my room. 

Wish me luck. If I soap a few times a week this month, and get 6-7 loaves done each time I do, I can do it! 

With love,

Mama Hauck