Artisan soap made with simple ingredients.

Make the switch to cleaner skin and a healthier home—starting with your soap.

Ditch the store-bought soap full of chemicals and choose a natural soap that’s gentle, safe, and made for skin.

A few years ago, my husband and I felt the rising cost of living. Also, after COVID-19 hit our household, my husband started to become ill easily and often. So much so that we left our home and bought 19 acres in rural Virginia. It was a spectacular price because most of the land was completely uphill, some may say it’s a mountain. We wanted to live almost to the top. Our dream was to start a homestead with chickens, pigs, goats, and maybe even a milk cow. We dreamed of a large greenhouse, a small cabin, and lots of hard, but amazing, memories of forging our way through this wilderness. We have had many many hard times but just like we expected we have made great memories here.

We are learning not just about ourselves but about the area around us. What we can and cannot handle together as a family of 7. We have learned to scale back on the animals and focus more on growing food. We do have goats and plan to have more soon. Our goal for the goats is milk. We not only have illness with my husband, but in the past couple of years, we have also discovered one of our children (for sure) has Celiac disease. This has forced us to be very mindful of what we are eating and how it is made/prepared.

This watchfulness has also spilled into the area of other toxins in our home. We want to live as much of a “natural” life as we can.

So, in an attempt to make “natural” non-toxic products for our family, I made my first batch of soap. They say to make about six batches before you really get the hang of it. I studied, learned, and made lots of soap. I had it packaged but had nothing to do with all this “practice soap”. I started giving them away to friends and family around me, and I got some great feedback. Turns our everyone loves the soaps I made. I started getting people actually buying what I was making! It was just the boost I needed. However, I did use some fragrance oils in my early batches because I just didn’t know what else to put in them, and real essential oils can be expensive. Even though it was a downside for me, I realized that other people love scented products. It wasn’t as big of a deal for them to have a little fragrance with their soaps; in fact, they loved the scented soaps I had made.

My goal with selling these soaps is to get non-toxic products into others’ homes as well. Since really understanding soap making, I have made a dish soap that I am absolutely thrilled with. I have never had a cleaner clean so well! I can truly see a big difference in my dishes, and even my backsplash has never been shinier.

I do plan to make shampoo bars, as that has always been a source of struggle for me with thin, limp hair. I want to use a shampoo that adds nourishment to my hair while also getting the dirt and debris off my scalp. I have not rolled out any shampoo bars yet but be aware…they are coming.

I chose the name “Wildwood Soap” because I originally planned to forage plants from our land to make into soap. I may still do that someday but at this point in my life with little children I don’t see that to be feasible. However, we will be adding goat milk soaps to our line in the foreseeable future. Stay tuned- Wildwood Soap is just getting started!

What sort of ingredients are used?

Wildwood Soap uses many different types of oils to curate soaps. We start with coconut oil. Once saponified (made into soap), it is a powerful cleaning agent! However, coconut oil alone can be a little too harsh on skin. Therefore, we also add either an animal fat such as tallow (beef), lard (pig), or we use palm oil.

We can’t make soap out of these two ingredients alone because the tallow/lard will not be shelf stable for long and just doesn’t make a great soap in large quantities.

Olive oil or rice bran oil is used as the third ingredient to our soaps. Both are gentle cleansers that add moisturizing properties to the soap.

Other add ins we may use include cocoa butter, shea butter, jojoba oil, castor oil, wheat germ oil, mango butter, coffee butter, flax seed oil, sunflower oil, grapeseed oil, rosehip oil, vitamin E oil, aloe vera, coffee, sodium lactate (makes bars harder and last longer), essential oils, fragrance oils, natural colorants such as beet powder, spinach powder, spirulina powder, but also some fun mica powders to make the bar soaps look pretty…or um….manly.

Each soap is uniquely made. We will continue to experiment and make great soaps curated for certain skin types. If there is something specific you would like please don’t hesitate to contact us!