War Food Farm demonstrates soap making at the LMH Market

[August 30, 2023]   On Saturday, August 26, Holly from War Food Farms was at the Lincoln Memorial Hospital Market giving a demonstration involving the soaps she sells each week. Holly Sanford showed those in attendance the process of taking solid soap and turning it into liquid soap.

Holly started off with a large loaf of soap in an approximately foot-long plastic soap mold and had a volunteer help her remove the soap from the mold. It took some elbow grease and a few good taps on the table to remove the loaf. Next, she moved the soap to another mold, this one made of wood, to cut it.

Holly then had the volunteer cut the soap from a full loaf into individual bars. All War Food Farm’s soaps are hand cut in this way. Using this soap cutting mold, Holly can cut forty bars of soap a day.

Holly then took everyone over to a bowl with soap shavings in it. These shavings came from a patchouli bar of soap she prepared earlier. Holly explained that she takes the shavings and turns them into liquid soap. She also uses these shavings to create laundry detergent she uses at home.

How the soap gets its scent was the final topic Holly talked about during her demonstration. She uses either essential oils, which are derived from natural sources, or fragrance oils, which are from synthetic sources. Some scents, such as cucumber melon, are not able to be extracted from nature, needing fragrance oils to create them. Some of the natural ingredients Holly uses to scent her soaps include tarragon and honey.

If you would like to try one of Holly’s hand-made goat milk soaps, she will be selling them at the LMH Market for the rest of the season. If you miss her there, however, she also sells made-to-order soap from her social media page year-round. If you’re interested in making soap yourself, Holly will teach a class on this at Heartland Community College Lincoln on October 18th.

[Matt Boutcher]