Hi There! It’s Us, StraightJacket Acres: Where Soap meets Crazy

It all started with chickens. Damn chickens. So, there I go down the rabbit hole and I find this homesteading trend. Please someone go back and just stop me there… Please.

I digress.

I turned into the Pinterest Queen. Saving posts, looking at gardening tips and tricks. My mother-in-law is already the super savvy gardener that we all need in our lives so I dove right in. I got excited about growing our own food and learning about herbal remedies. Chickens. Natural Living. Organic Gardening. Companion Planting. (Flowers with my veggies? Yes, please!) Homesteading. Cold Process Soap. And there it is.

Cold. Process. Soap.

What? I can make my own soap? You have my attention. And I can make them pretty? And good for my skin? AND SELL THEM? AND PEOPLE WANT THEM? You have got to be kidding me. This dream I have of living off our land, being self sufficient, working from home, It’s possible for all this to happen?

I have lost my mind. My husband tells me this on a daily basis while I am saving all this. He is sitting beside me just shaking his head. He never wanted to be a farmer. His whole family has worked this land of ours for the last nearly 100 years. He knows the hard work. He knows the heart ache. He has seen the weather take everything. He has seen the crops fail. He has seen the cattle die. He knows where I am headed and he has dug his heels in and said “No. Just no.” OK so, I am a good wife and I listen to my husband. We discuss things. We negotiate. I do what I want any way and make my first bar of soap. That’s it, I’m hooked.

The first batch turned out ok. My second failed miserably. I am a baker, I thought oil was oil and like baking, can be interchanged within reason. That is NOT the case with cold process soap. Back to Pinterest I go. When I dove deeper into cold process soap, I learned the benefits for your skin (I have not had to use lotion in a really long time), the benefits for the environment, the benefits for YOU!

That year, we changed up the way we planted the garden. We used more permaculture techniques and the garden flourished! I think we put up over 100 quart jars of beans. About the same in tomato juice, roasted red sauce, and whole tomatoes. My husband started to see the good. And I sold my first bar of soap. He said maybe.

The business took hold then. We started focusing on more natural living. Trying to eat more seasonally. And soap. So much freaking soap. I took over the spare room. I raided my mom’s craft room. Our children avoided us. I lost my mind.

I love making cold process soap. I love the beauty I can create. I love making people happy. I love soap. I know, I’m a little weird.

Fast forward through lots of failures and lots of successes. We have morphed into this self-sufficientish, herbal remedy making, herb and veggie growing homestead that we love. And HE SAID YES!

I still don’t have any damn chickens.