my grandmother Powell made soap from old fat and the leaving in the smoke house after the winter was over. The leaving was usually old meat rinds. My mother was a town girl and I never saw her make soap before detergents came into our house mother used a large bar of soap. This bar had the letters P&G and I suppose that stood for proctor and gamble.
I have made lye soap since I have had a home of my own but I think I am the only one in my family who has.
I used lye and grease but you can make lye from the ashes from a wood fire. You take a container and fill this with wood ash and then make a hole in the bottom. You have to put this container on a stand letting the hole in the bottom extend over the edge. You pour water over the ash and let it drip thro' the ash catching the water in a pan below. when all the water has dripped thro' pour the same water back over your ash pot the more times your pour the ash water the stronger the lye water. This lye water can be used instead of the lye from the store. I don't know if they still sell lye. I haven't seen it in the stores in years.
At first the earliest settlers simply brought a plentiful supply of soap along with them. The Talbot, a ship chartered by the Massachusetts Bay Company to carry persons and supplies from England to its colonies at Naumbeak now known as Salem and Boston, listed among its cargo 2 firkins of soap. A firkin is an old measurement which was a wooden, hooped barrel of about nine gallon capacity. John Winthrop, who was to become the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when writing to his wife in 1630 from Boston included soap in a list of necessities to be brought on her crossing to the New world.
After the colonists were settled and had been able to survive the first years of hardships, they found it more advantageous to make soap themselves using the copious amount of wood ashes, a natural result of their homesteading activities. With also a plentiful supply of animal fat from the butchering of the animals they used for food, the colonists had on hand all the ingredients for soap making. They did not have to rely on waiting for soap to be shipped from England and waste their goods or few pieces of currency in trade for soap.
Soap with some work and luck could be made for free. Soap making was performed as a yearly or semiannual event on the homesteads of the early settlers. As the butchering of animals took place in the fall, soap was made at that time on many homesteads and farms to utilize the large supply of tallow and lard that resulted. On the homes or farms where butchering was not done, soap was generally made in the spring using the ashes from the winter fires and the waste cooking grease, that had accumulated throughout the year.
3 comments:
Oh Patsy, this is great. My mother used to make soap. We lived in a small town but she'd get out in the back yard with her cast iron wash pot and make soap. As I remember she saved all the grease used in cooking, like bacon grease etc. She kept a container on the stove that she poured all the grease drippings into. She also seasoned vegetables with that grease and boy were they good. I don't have grease drippings today and vegetables just don't taste like mother's. I guess she had a bigger container somewhere that she stored grease when her little container on the stove got too full.
She used lye. Then you could buy it at our little grocery store but it's probably a thing of the past.
One year they killed a hog and was that ever an experience. They fried up 'cracklings' outside over an open fire in a big cast iron pot, perhaps the wash pot. Mother then made 'crackling cornbread.'
Hadn't thought of all this in years. Thanks for the memories.
I recall Momma making some soap...but she just made it in a dishpan on the stove.
I have never made soap...but I bet it was better than what we buy in the store.
I thought I posted on this this AM...I must be loosing it...I remember Mama laking lye soap in the old black kittle in the yard...She poured it in shallow pans and kept it in the smoke house. I remember the day we got to cut it into squares....but then we had to use it and it did not smell pretty like store bought soap...
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