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Black Valley Farm started as an offshoot from our own interest in learning to make soap. Both our grandparents made the old fashioned lye soap for cleaning and bathing. When we discovered an old soap round dating back to the last butchering in 1959, in Helen Ann's grandparents' farmhouse that we inherited, we decided to try and make soap for our own use.
An exhaustive search for a source of quality tallow or lard led us to try a recipe that we found for Castile soap using 100 percent olive oil. To our satisfaction we came up with a wonderful soap that was mild and long lasting. Unlike a lot of Grandma Stella's soap, it did not take the hide off of us and it actually had a very pleasing scent.
After reading many books on soap making, we decided to try the hand-milled process and add natural ingredients to our basic soap. The first being milk and honey. We really enjoyed the soap (and so did our Lhaso Apso Desi, but not for bathing - he thought it had a nice taste to it.).
With a large batch of soap sitting around, we decided to give some to the relatives to try. To our surprise, they enjoyed it and convinced us to make more varieties to sell. As we expanded so did delivery of new types of soaps to the relatives to try; hence our motto:
 We have continued testing new varieties of soap and now have 24 types plus a basic lye soap. In the future, we hope to increase varieties of soap as well as produce a shampoo bar and doggie shampoo bar.
Photo: Desi and Lucy are our "poster" Lhaso Apsos for animal rescue. Find out more about rescuing this very special breed from the website: www.lhasaapsorescue.org. |
