Farm Shop | ARealGreenLife

CONTENTS

Tallow Soap

Ingredients: 100% hand rendered tallow, lye (read all the ingredient details here). Nothing else. FRAGRANCE FREE.

where to buy: If you're local to the Atherton Tablelands, you can also buy our soap at Atherton Health Foods, at the Atherton Food Coop and at Sprout to Life in Malanda.

If you would like to buy soap directly from us (including if you are a retailer who would like to sell our soap): please contact me.

Keep scrolling for more info and user's comments 🙂

Contented cattle with a bowl of tallow soap in the foreground

Read about our ingredients, soap-making process, and ethics

Read all the details about the exact ingredients we use, how we make our soap, and how we care for our cattle that provide the main soap ingredient.

What people say

"So nice to find an economical, simple, fragrance-free soap that is locally and ethically made and that I know is good for my family's skin"
“Best shaving soap ever”
“Solved a problem I had with stinging, itchy skin after showering”
“Fixed a rash on my hands, which comes back whenever I stop using this soap”
"I use it all over, including washing my hair"
"We all use it; it even works great for our dog and I feel good about not using nasty ingredients on her"
"Longest lasting soap I ever had"

Why we don't use essential oils in our Soap

Essential oils can both heal and harm. They're harvested and processed on an industrial scale with big impacts on plants and aquatic environments. They're also highly concentrated and extremely powerful, with the potential to dull our senses, to kill normal as well as abnormal cells, and to contribute to antibiotic resistance. I support the careful use of essential oils by qualified healers; I avoid them in other settings.

Where to purchase

If you're local to the Atherton Tablelands, you can also buy our soap at Atherton Health Foods, at the Atherton Food Coop and at Sprout to Life in Malanda.

If you would like to buy soap directly from us (including if you are a retailer who would like to sell our soap): please contact me.

How we came to be making tallow soap

Image coming soon

We're a family of 4 with a small farm near Millaa Millaa. Since 2007 when our first child was born we've been practicing healthier choices in what we eat, wash and clean with, and put on our skin.

Since 2012 when we moved to our farm we've been raising our own meat, milk, and eggs. In the process of raising and farm butchering cattle for our own use, we discovered a resource that we had no immediate use for, but did not want to waste - the special fat around the organs, called kidney fat. This fat that can be rendered to make tallow, which can then be used for lots of things, including tallow soap.

Along the way I was also becoming increasingly frustrated that it was so hard to buy simple, fragrance and toxin free soap that did not use destructively grown palm oil.

Long story short, we put those two things together and now I've lost track of how long we've been making tallow soap for our own use. A few years ago we decided to try selling some at our local farmers market as a home education project, and from there some of our local stores started stocking it.

It's hand made in small batches at our kitchen table with fat from animals we have raised organically ourselves, that never experience the stress of separation from their herd or transportation.

We believe it's up to all of us, in our own kitchens, gardens, and communities, to get on with taking better care of ourselves and our families in ways that also take care of the world around us in whatever ways we can. This is one of the ways our family can take positive action on this.

I acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land, waters, sky, and community. I acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. I pay my respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, histories and cultures, and to Ancestors and Elders past, present, and emerging.

Inclusion: You are unreservedly welcome here regardless of whatever superficial differences there might be appear to be between you and I.

Disclaimer: Content written by me and posted on ARealGreenLife.com and elsewhere is my own opinion, based on research and personal experience. You are solely responsible for how you use this information and any consequences that arise as a result.

About our cattle

The tallow that we use in our soap is rendered fat from our own cattle. It's a resource that would go to waste if we did not use it to make soap.

Our cattle are organically raised and grass fed in a grazing system which also cares for our ecosystem and sequesters carbon in the soil.

We raise only enough cattle for our own needs, and employ a local on-farm butcher to eliminate stressful separation and transport. Read more about our philosophy of caring for our animals and their environment.

About our soap ingredients - TALLOW

To make tallow, we start by rendering the special fat that is only found around the internal organs (it's not the same as the fat in the muscle meats, like you find on your steak).

Rendering is just melting and straining the fat several times until all the impurities have separated out from it and been removed. This is time consuming and messy, but it's not complicated.

The finished tallow is clean, faint yellow in color, and has very little odor. It's so similar to the sebum produced by our own skin that in Latin, a translation for “tallow” is “sebum.”

Tallow soap is very soothing and nourishing for sensitive skin, skin damaged or irritated by junk-laden soaps and harsh detergents, and for babies and the elderly. Also great for shaving.

About lye (CAUSTIC SODA and WATER) - and the soap-making process

Caustic soda and water make up a liquid solution called lye that's an absolutely necessary ingredient for soap making.

We measure the caustic soda and water very precisely in relation to the tallow.

(Our grandparents made soap using whatever animal fat they had, and lye that was obtained much more haphazardly from wood ash and water. The resulting soap was unpredictable and sometimes harsh on skin when the lye to fat ratio wasn't ideal.)

We carefully combine the lye with the tallow, then pour the resulting soap batter into molds. The following day, we turn out the soap and set it aside to cure.

Combining the lye and tallow starts off a chemical reaction called "saponification." The process of saponification takes from 4 to 6 weeks to be fully complete - this is called "curing." During the curing time, the fat and lye become something else entirely. Soap.

Once the soap is fully cured, the original fat and caustic have been completely altered by the magic of chemistry and what’s left is just soap. They're now a different substance and there's no way to turn them back into tallow and caustic.

How we make sure our soap is extra skin-friendly

As well as the long cure time to allow the soap to fully saponify, there’s another strategy for making sure the finished soap has no traces of caustic left in it.

If the raw ingredients at the beginning are in balance, the fully saponified soap will have no traces of any of them remaining at the end of curing. But if the ingredients are not balanced in relationship to one another, whichever was in excess at the beginning will also remain in the final soap.

So, we start with a little “too much” tallow. It’s a soap making technique called “superfatting,” and it ensures that the final soap has traces of tallow remaining in it.

So we get certain insurance that there is no caustic left, as well as the moisturizing and nourishing benefits of tallow for our skin.