I Used to Hate Gritty Soap but the Master Gardener was Right
I put off making pumice soap for a long time. Honestly the whole idea made me cringe a little. I have a very specific image in my mind when I think of gritty soap, a brown, muddy bar my children inevitably leave behind after a long day of playing in the dirt. You know the one. Slimy, gritty, and just generally unpleasant. No thank you.
But my sister in law asked. Again.
I love my sister in law. She's a master gardener, the kind of person who is happiest with dirt under her fingernails and soil on her boots. She is always there for me when I have a gardening (or life) conundrum and she just so happens to love a gritty bar of soap. So, I started researching.
I searched high and low for finely ground pumice. I wasn't willing to make something I wouldn't use myself, so the texture had to be right. What I found surprised me completely.
Finely ground pumice is nothing like the gritty bars I had imagined. It seems to turn a bar of soap into a soap-rock. Nothing you want to bathe your whole body with but it's just rough enough to dig out the embedded dirt that gets ground into hands and feet after a long day in the garden. Leaving your skin exfoliated and clean. It’s not scratchy. Not muddy. Just clean.
I put it to the test this spring with my herd of kids (the human kind) as we prepared and planted all of our garden beds. Our original bar is still sitting at the sink, clean, rock hard, and only slightly smaller after a busy springtime of use. It’s become a favorite of many including myself.
If you've ever struggled to get truly clean after a day in the garden, working on the car, or any job that gets deep into your skin this is the bar for you. Like all of our soap it’s made with fresh goat milk from our Nubian does and organic plant oils. We also added the bright combination of cedarwood, bergamot, and rosemary essential oils to leave you with a clean reminder of a good day in the garden.
My sister in law was right. And when it comes to gardening, she usually is.
