It has been a really long time since I revisited my site.... and so much has changed. I thought it would be good to bring my readers up to speed - and my readership is increasing in spite of my not having updated it, so I promise to try and get a new post up more often.
Firstly: I no longer live in the UK. We moved to a farm in Extremadura, Western Spain where my husband and I grow figs and olives and are in the early stages of trying to get a permaculture food forest going. We also have a large number of wild flowers and medicinal plants growing here and we are totally organic. So yes, I am planning on making more soap and more toiletries and perhaps using the medicinal plants from the finca in a productive way.
We also have a yurt. And a tipee is about to go up as well as a bell tent so we are on track to have visitors soon.
The soap and toiletry making courses. Alas I gave this up when I left the UK but am now thinking that there will be a strong possibility of my doing something similar here in Spain - combined with a holiday perhaps or a walking or painting holiday (links coming soon to the best alternative holidays ever in this area) with an afternoon or day of messing around with soap. There are a number of possibilities.
I have not given up making soap or my own toiletries and hair products. If anything, this has become even more important here in Spain because we have an ecological septic tank and waste water disposal and cannot put any detergents or other 'nasties' down the drain. I shall be experimenting, especially with olive oil - we now have 150 olive trees and that's a lot of oil!
So please check back with me regularly and if you fancy reading about what we are doing take a look at
Technobillies.
