Today I put a thin layer of wood ashes over my vegetable garden, trusting that the potash will enrich the soil with the winter rains. Our Arkansas ancestors did the same thing, but generations of ...

Today I put a thin layer of wood ashes over my vegetable garden, trusting that the potash will enrich the soil with the winter rains. Our Arkansas ancestors did the same thing, but generations of ...

Area park guide Ellen Cox, knowing the many merits of lye soap, will be the first to tell you, "It's one of those old heritage crafts that we want to make sure continues." While it may take some ...

Martha’s Health Foods and Herbs at 215 W. Kenosha St. used to sell lye soap produced by a family living in eastern Oklahoma until the family simply stopped making it. “About 15 years ago,” said Kathy ...

So bear with me here. This column is eventually going to be about soap but I have to put it into a bit of perspective. A few weeks back Grant Robinson, who lives here in Garrard County, sent me some ...

Readers, this is the fourth of 12 basic homestead skills we’ll be presenting every month throughout 2019 from Kimberlee Bastien’s new book, 52 Homestead Skills. We invite you to join Kimberlee and her ...

Lye soap is made by boiling a mixture of lye (sodium hydroxide) and animal fats. Lye could be purchased, but most Arkansans seem to have made their own from wood ashes. Almost all the sources specify ...