I am a member of the Handcrafted Soap and Cosmetic Guild, a non-profit trade association serving the handcrafted soap and cosmetic industry. Last year I tested and received Basic Soapmaking Certification. At the guild conference next month, May 2019, I plan to test and receive Advanced Soapmaking Certification. As part of that process, I had to make a basic soap from scratch. This entailed doing all the formula calculations by hand, getting safety documentation of all the ingredients, and submitting information on the soap making process. Such a far cry from the inexactness of making soap in times past! As I wrote in an earlier post, "For the pioneers, making soap was a hot, exhausting process involving wood ashes from their cooking fires and animal fats from their livestock or leftover cooking grease. It was an imprecise process at best but did result in a functional soft soap that was good for cleaning clothes but rather harsh for cleaning skin." Instead of dealing with all that mess, the basic simple bar of soap (pictured below) I made in the comfort of my kitchen is gentle and beautiful without added color or fragrance. 

Thanks for stopping by!

​~Debbie
Live simply. Use Soap.

On a windy March morning during Spring Break, my husband and I decided to drive out to a site that I'd heard about but had never visited - Kingsley Plantation on Fort George Island north of Jacksonville, Florida. Even now, the plantation seems remote and secluded. I can only imagine what it must have been like over 200 years ago. The main house was built just a few years before 1800 and is the oldest surviving plantation house in the state of Florida. Since 1991, it has been part of the National Parks Service. At one time the plantation was 1000 acres; today the park encompasses 60 acres.

The main house is only open for tours on the weekend, but we walked through the kitchen house and peeked in the windows of the house. The kitchen house was probably added during the 1820s and has floors made of tabby, a concrete like building material made by burning oyster shells to create lime, and mixing it with sand, water, ash, and oyster shell fragments. Over time, the roughness of the tabby became smoother as it was walked on. I imagine it would be quite uncomfortable to walk on without shoes! In the above picture, the kitchen house is connected to the main house by a covered walkway. Anna and her children lived on the second floor of the kitchen house.  

The Kingsley family lived on Fort George for 25 years. An unusual aspect of the Kingsley household was that it was polygamous. Kingsley had children with three other slave women who were treated as co-wives and later granted their freedom, but Anna was the matriarch of the family. He was proud of his multiracial family and believed that society should be modeled after the Spanish three-tier system of white landowners, slaves, and freed blacks.

There were 60 slaves that worked the plantation on Fort George Island. Besides farming, Kingsley trained his slaves in carpentry, blacksmithing, and cotton ginning. They labored under a task system where each slave had a quota of work to be accomplished. When they finished their tasks, they were free to do as they pleased, usually tending their individual gardens, fishing, and even selling their produce. It seems that Kingsley was a more lenient slave holder than some. Thirty two slave cabins were constructed out of tabby and were arranged in a semicircular arc within view of the main house, an arrangement that was unique among the plantations of that era. Each cabin had two rooms, one with a fireplace, and a sleeping loft. Today, these remains are some of the best examples of the use of tabby as a construction material.

Because of increasingly restrictive racial laws leading up to the Civil War, Zephaniah Kingsley sold his plantation and moved with his family and slaves to Haiti in 1839. The plantation on Fort George Island changed ownership several times until 1955 when the Florida Park Service acquired most of Fort George Island, including the plantation grounds and called it Kingsley Plantation State Historic Site. 
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Today the plantation grounds are forested where fields and gardens were once cultivated. Ancient oak trees draped in Spanish moss keep watch over the remains of the slave cabins. Scattered wild flowers add to the quiet dignity of the area. They whisper of the people who lived, labored, and loved here long ago.

We enjoyed our visit to Kingsley Plantation and learned more about the people whose influence still lingers here, in the area where we live.

Thanks for stopping by!

​~Debbie

Recently I updated the About section of my Facebook page, so this is a good time to include some of that info here.

My name is Debbie Lamb and I make soap. This is my story.

There was a time when I didn’t even know there was such a thing as handmade soap anymore. I thought the days of soap making from scratch was confined to that period of time when early settlers of the United States had to make do with what they had, or when hardy pioneers forged paths across the country in search of a new piece of land to call home. Who made soap from scratch in these modern times?

For the pioneers, making soap was a hot, exhausting process involving wood ashes from their cooking fires and animal fats from their livestock or leftover cooking grease. It was an imprecise process at best but did result in a functional soft soap that was good for cleaning clothes but rather harsh for cleaning skin. Today soap making is both an art and a science. Ready made lye is available in convenient pellet or flake form. Vegetable oils, animal fats like lard and tallow, and exotic butters like shea and cocoa are easy to find. A myriad of formulas can be formulated with online soap calculators to ensure the bar isn't harsh from too much lye. Micas, oxides, clays, and other colorants are used to add beauty to each bar, and an ever growing library of techniques is evidence of just how artistic soap making can be.