The leaves in upstate NY are already mostly gone, with the rainbow of Fall coming and going before we can even blink. Its my favorite time of year - my birthday, sweatshirts, soup...three of my favorite things have made their debut.
Today I made a big batch of chicken soup - far more than we could ever eat in a week. Leftovers will get canned and saved for a day when we need it - waste not want not...
It's been a rough 18 months on this planet - that's right, I said it - 18 months - March 13, 2020 was when our lives shut down by this pandemic. I keep seeming these meme's on Facebook that say "how is it almost 2022, I am still recovering from 2020". Girl, same. But things are starting to feel normal - new normal I guess, but way more normal.
Our family has gone through so much change in such a short time. We moved away from family and into the mountains, opened a store, the kids started a new school, we moved into a new house. Nothing to complain about - all good things. But good things can be challenging too. Juggling a store is challenge - a good challenge, and we wouldn't have it any other way - but its definitely been a test of our constitution and our schedules.
With the store, we are in a position to help other makers like ourselves. It's not easy being a crafter of things - its not easy to compete with mass-produced goods made my machines. We are happy with the "maker family" that we created, and we know that the folks that come to visit us in the store know that what we sell is made by actual people, who really do a little dance every time we sell something. Our customers share in our values. That's important to us. That's why we do what we do.
As we look to the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of the opening of WTS & Company, we are also in the midst of a large expansion - one that doubles the size of both the store and our manufacturing space. To think that just 5 years ago, we were starting WTS from our tiny galley KITCHEN!
I promise to you that I will get better at this writing stuff. I truly thank anyone that is reading this - if you've gotten to this point, you must be a loyal fan.
In the meantime, get dirty, get clean, and stay safe.
Peace and love!
Melissa
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I’ve always enjoyed Thoreau’s writings and have read Walden three times. In fact, I have read each of my copies once.
There’s a place in Northern MN where I feel A Waldenesque connection to nature. This is just one of the many such experiences.
I grew up in Northern MN and spent my childhood playing in forests. Every year my dad would take my brothers and I camping in a state forest where his dad has taken him. In my mid-twenties, in the early years of an 80 hour per week corporate gig, I took a few days and went by myself. On the first morning I woke up early, laced up my boots and headed out to an area where I hadn’t been for years. The goal was to locate a green cup that my dad’s dad had placed on a tree, next to a spring fed stream, 50 years earlier. This forest was expansive, bordered by a lake and river, a long forgotten railroad track and I don’t know what else because it was 15 miles deep. After a few hours of hiking over ridges, climbing through blowdowns and following the general meander of animal trails, I found my feet sinking into a swamp that shouldn’t have been there. My head told me I was lost and my compass was freakishly spinning (due to iron deposits, or so the story went), but my gut said it was the forest swamp that was misplaced. I pushed on, hopping from tree to grass clump to avoid going knee deep into the swampy muck. It wasn’t long before I saw what looked to be a clearing up ahead. Climbing a tree to get a better look, I saw a lake. A beautiful but small, unmapped and undiscovered, lake.
Though I may have been lost, I knew I wasn’t THAT lost. In my early years I’d been THAT lost. So lost that your gut clenches up, mind starts playing tricks and you find yourself in a flight response. I’d vowed to never get THAT lost again and had taken the time to learn the forest and all its hidden places. So, I had to figure out what was going on with this mysterious lake.
Compass now behaving, I triangulated position to a previous ridge, backtracked to higher ground and approached from a different angle. Finding my way down the ridge through thick brush and fallen trees was a brutalizing maze but within an hour I was crawling under the last spruce tree and into the clearing.
In front of me was the lake and, to my amazement, there was also a beaver dam...no, it was THE beaver dam. My jaw dropped. Stretching between two ridges, THE dam was 150 feet long, 6-7 feet tall and four feet wide. The beaver had also constructed seven sub-dams to catch any overflow. Hanging on a tree worked into sub-dam 4, was my grandpa’s green cup.
I don’t know how long I stood there in awe, but the sound of a jet passing overhead burst my silent thoughtlessness and the thoughts came rushing in.
Out here in the middle of anthropo-centric nowhere, lives a beaver. This beaver, using only its teeth and determination, built a marvel of natural engineering. It certainly has some day-to-day stresses but by using what nature supplied, it provides everything it needs. In contrast, the passing jet is filled with oblivious passengers, all trying to scrap together an existence of consumption and fleeting contentment: businesspeople away from their families for lifestyle and stockholders, tourists trying to momentarily escape the daily grind, people trying to reconnect with separated friends and family. We consume and spend a great deal of resources to get back to what should have always been our first priority.
That’s when I came up with my mantra: Does it matter to the beaver in the woods?
Because, if it doesn’t matter to the beaver in the woods, is it really worth doing?
I would say no.
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According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), small businesses represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms. Since 1995, small businesses have generated 64 percent of new jobs, and paid 44 percent of the total United States private payroll, according to the SBA.
If you are reading this, then you are probably a customer of ours or hopefully you soon will be! WOOT WOOT! THANK YOU for shopping small!
One of the guiding principles of our lives, both in business and in our personal lives, is helping others and our community. As a business, the best way that we can do this is to get our supplies and services as locally as possible, from people and businesses who share the same values of social consciousness and personal responsibility to their employees that we have, even if sometimes we pay at a higher price!
Here is how we see it...
Lets take one of our main ingredients, Organic African Shea Butter, for example. As the fat extracted from the nut of the African Shea Tree, its impossible to get this product "Made in the USA". We acknowledge that. The trees simply don't grow here! However that doesn't mean that we can't "locally source" it!
When we were looking for a supplier of Shea Butter, we came across a family owned company located right here in NY, and even better, 3 towns away from our headquarters! Now, we could get this product from many suppliers across the world, and many in the USA too, possibly at cheaper prices - but our new friend Muj, lives, works and has children in our local community.
When we buy 100 pounds of Shea Butter, a large portion of that money stays, not only in the USA, but in OUR immediate community! He shops at his local grocery store, he pays his school taxes and send his little queen bee (she's the cutest) to dance lessons! His business pays taxes to the state of NY, and he employs LOCAL men & women, who he pays a decent living wage so they too can support their families locally.
Not only can we feel good about staying local, but the quality of his products (we get much more than just Shea Butter from him) are superb and his service is white-glove.
Another company that we love working with is SKS Bottle & Packaging - they are the company that supplies us with our jars, bottles and tubes. We'd NEVER go to any other company. Why, you might ask?
SKS is a family owned, New York business that was started out of garage! (Sound familiar?) They have great pricing, quality products and BEST OF ALL... 85% of their stocked products are MADE IN THE USA, so not only are they employing other New York residents, they are helping to keep jobs IN THE US!
These two companies are mainstays in our supplier portfolio - we keep going back, not always because they are the cheapest, but because of the shared values and sense of community we get from working with them.
We know that our dollars are going back into the community to benefit everyone, not being whisked away to some billion dollar corporations off-shore account.
Leave us a comment and let us know what you think?
Want to read more about why its best to shop small and local? Check out these links!
Shopping Local vs. Shopping Locally
Hey, Small-Business Owner, Do You Shop Local?
FORBES: Why You Need To Support Small Businesses
How Mom & Pop Can Help Save The Economy
10 Ways Small Business Benefit The Local Community
]]>Somehow, vanilla has come to mean no-frills... boring... mundane. "She's so vanilla", or "my life is so vanilla" is not understood to be a good thing. It's pretty insulting, actually, and I am not happy about the bad rap that vanilla has gotten over the years.
My favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla. For as long as I can remember, its my go-to - I don't stray. Sometimes, I'll throw in a some rainbow sprinkes or maybe even some butterscotch, but the base is always vanilla... boring?
My favorite scent is vanilla. I only burn vanilla candles, and if I wear a perfume or body spray, its always vanilla. Vanilla incense and vanilla lotion are sexy.
Plain and simple, maybe. But how is that bad?
Lately, vanilla has taught me a few things and being the profound lady that I am, I am about to impart its existential meaning to me, to you.
Ask any soap maker... Vanilla is tough fragrance to work with. Vanilla has this natural component - vanillin (C8H8O3 hardly a simple compound)- the component that makes it what it is; the compound that gifts us the hypnotizing smell that is so familiar,we can identify anywhere.
Vanillin turns soap brown. Even the slightest vanillin content in a fragrance or additive can turn a snowy white soap batter brown or any shade of tan in between. And the truth is... we are never exactly sure what shade we are going to end up with.
Photo 1 by Jill Tate McHeffey, showing various soaps made with the same oils, but different scents that contain vanillin, and one that doesn't... Photo 2 by Tabitha Rupe, showing a soap that was made with half the batter scented with vanilla, and the white swirl left unscented.
They make additives and that are supposed to counteract the discoloration, and they work...sometimes. Sometimes, they work for a few weeks, and then BAM - they stop working. They merely delay the inevitable.
So much about life is inevitable. I know we all like to think we have free will, and while that in itself could be the topic of hundreds of blog posts and debates, I am of the opinion that everything we do is predetermined by every experience we've had, every decision we've made in the past. Those things all determine our future. There is no choice. It's all an illusion.
You know what else is an illusion?
White. Vanilla. Soap.
So what do we do?
We've learn to embrace the uncertainty of vanilla in our soaps and so we sprinkle color around it to draw out its natural brown beauty. We add some pink mica, maybe some sparkles and a little swirl for good measure.
Does any of this sound familiar?
W.T.S. is a family business. Husband, Wife, and 2 young sons. Our life, to some of our friends, seems pretty vanilla. We generally know the trajectory of the day, week and month. Soccer, baseball, visits with Grandma & Grandpa, repeat. Things don't change all that much from day to day. We're comfortable. Familiar.
But everyday, we throw in some rainbow sprinkles, drizzle on some butterscotch, and suddenly, the vanilla is not boring. Its the base of all the wonderful things that we have in our life. Its the familiarity and security of life. It's what grounds us and allows us to relax.
So, I love my vanilla life. Vanilla is awesome. Vanilla is full of surprises.
Don't let the haters tell you anything different.
Want to see photos of how different fragrances containing vanilla can discolor soap? Here is an amazing blog post by the Soap Queen!
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We juggle, balance, adapt, change course, reorganize, multi-task, and manage every day… When I say we, you are included. There is no way to live in the world, at least not these days, without having to deal with the unexpected and unplanned on a daily basis.
Plans?
What are they and how do I get some? Okay, now that I have some, how do I keep them? A question for the ages. I digress…
The real purpose of this post is to highlight the fact that it really does take a lot of work to build any dream. When my husband and I started out on this journey, I’m not sure we realized how much work it really was…
My husband is a full time stay-at-home dad. Now, anyone, man or woman, that has stayed home with 1 or more children knows that this job is the single most difficult job in the world, and of course comes with the stigma that all the stay at home moms know about, multiplied a few times because he’s a dude.
Now add in a constant stream of business responsibilities, like order processing, product manufacturing, inventory, ordering, people knocking on the door for pick-ups, fielding phone calls, emails, texts, FB messages and responding to me… who sits in an office all day, helpless, coming up with ideas every other minute that I shoot off to him in broken thoughts. He digests and makes sense of them. And then plans the execution.
It’s not easy on either of us but we are a team, and a damn good one, at that. Our personalities complement each other very well, and our indiviual strengths make up for our individual weaknesses.
But we didn’t get here alone, either…and I am thankful everyday that we’ve been so lucky and have so many loyal customers already, who support us and pass on our name.
So to thank those loyal customers and those of you who have made it this far reading the blog… go claim you 10% off orders of $10 or more using the code BLOG8110 **
Get dirty, my friends.
We promise we’ll always be there to clean you up.
**Discount valid from 8/1/2017-8/15/2017
]]>My name, and an important place to start, is Melissa. I’m 30-something, I have 2 wonderful boy-children (insane, adorable psycho’s), and a super-fine husband who is the ultimate life and business partner. Name: Matt. Someday I’ll do a post about how we met, because what a story that is… but for now – a little about us.
We are passionate. About EVERYTHING. Seriously – we try our best not to do anything we don’t love to do because who wants to do something you don’t want to do?
By far though, one of our biggest passions is learning and using what we learn to live self-sufficiently – as self-sufficient as one can be living in the suburbs of New York City on a 60X100 plot surrounded by highways and a million other people.
We have a tiny little house with a big backyard – gardens, playgrounds, and chickens take up much of that space. We love being outdoors, camping, hiking, canning the fresh food we get from our garden, making our own cheese, foraging berries to make jelly. We love to “garage sale” (yes, a verb).
We are “secondary consumers” – we like to look for handmade, homemade, used, upcycled, recycled and repurposed stuff – all those crunchy-type things that take time and passion to pursue. We have so much passion… not so much time.
When people ask us how we got in to soap making, we tell them - especially if they know all those things I just mentioned about us – it was the next logical skill to learn in our path to sustainability and self-sufficiency… after all – we want to be the family that survives the apocalypse, while being warm, well-fed, and most importantly clean and fragrant.
So we learned. We watched video's, read articles and books, learned about oils and additives and plants and seeds and all the hundreds, maybe thousands of things one can add to a soap to make it fun, colorful, useful, creamy, rich, fragrant, and soothing.
And then we started experimenting. And we never really stopped.
Every recipe is different - which at times, can be annoying - but we want to have something for everyone.
Vegan soap? We got some of those soaps.
Soy-free? We got those too.
People who just like good bubbles and yummy smells? We got you covered.
So, here we are now, making soap for you - soap that we hope that you love and that helps you relax and feel good about what you are putting on your body. Soap that you enjoy using for whatever the many different reasons there are, whether its the smell, the feel, the ingredients, the awesome swirls, or the plain bar.
Soap that we make the old fashioned way. By hand and with lots of love.
We love your skin and your skin will love our soap.
Let us wash you (in the least creepy way possible).
Matt & Melissa Peters
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