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 ...

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 ...

When I first called Natalie Pepin, I told her I really wanted to learn how to make soap. “But I’m afraid of lye,” I confessed. I suggested maybe we should do candles instead. “No,” she told me. “Let’s ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Soap-making has a rich history and is a blend of art and science. While traditional soap recipes call for ingredients like oils and lye, innovative crafters have been exploring natural and ...