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100% Olive Oil & Honey.
This September, 2021, we started making fresh batches of soap with this year’s olive oil and honey.
This beautiful fresh soap is seriously creamy on the skin.
Is there any product we use more intimately than soap? On our face, in our hair. We wipe it all over our bodies. It gets in our eyes. We use it to wash our babies and young children. We don’t think about it much – it’s a product we’ve always trusted. But does it deserve that trust? Is the soap we use harsh – even toxic?
When I left modelling for journalism, I joined the Channel 7 news room in Sydney. One of my first jobs? To investigate chemicals in the home, industry and agriculture. To find out what we were putting into the air, the earth, the water and our food. Little did I know that what I found out would change my life.
Over the course of 6 weeks, I learnt that many agricultural chemicals used by Australian farmers were banned in the US and Europe. That industry was as drug dependant as any addict. That many dermatologists hated the stuff women were putting on their faces – regarding it as useless, unnecessary and expensive. Or worse – harmful. I learned that all humans have different levels of tolerance, that what some can deal with is poisonous to others. That some of us, being genetically stronger, can survive the chemical onslaught of modern times where others sicken and succumb. I learned that more and more people were becoming vulnerable to a variety of things we were breathing, eating and drinking. To the chemicals we used to washing our clothes and clean our homes. And the way we were cleaning ourselves was becoming a major problem. My research contributed to a report by Kerry O’Brien, called the Circle of Poison it won the most prestigious award in journalism that year, the Gold Walkley.
Each batch of soap is unique because the oil and honey varies during each harvest. When using very green fresh olive oil the soap colour can be quite dark. And every honey is a different colour. Sometimes there’s a white coating on one side of the bar of soap. This coating is what soap makers call ‘soda ash’. There’s still no consensus on why it happens, but according to soap maker Vicki Younger it happens more in the colder months than during summer soap making. All of us at the farm have commented that the soap is creamy on the skin and seems to last longer than commercial soap.
Hope you enjoy our lovely soap.