One activity that we planned on doing for our Pioneer Unit was to make homemade soap from lye and lard. I borrowed the supplies from my brother who likes to make soap and we finally got around to doing the activity yesterday. We didn’t wear our pioneer clothes though since they were put away in the box.
The reason why we wanted to make soap is because I found this bit of information about Susannah Hawkins, the ancestor that Evelyn was representing this year…
“To make soap, we made a wooden trough and placed straw and ashes in it and then let the snow melt on top of that and seep through the mixture. The liquid that came through was boiled with grease and produced soap to wash with.”
So we made old fashioned lye/lard soap… with some modern conveniences. The process was super easy and didn’t take very long.
And now we just have to let it cure for 4-6 weeks before we use it.
