What's in a name.

When you talk to people with people about soap making, you will start to hear stories about their personal experiences and memories. I hear about moms' making soap with the leftover kitchen fats and lye leached from ashes in the fireplace but my favorite stories are about the pig farmers.

Farmers used to boil the pig skins to remove the hair. It's done over a wood fire in a large iron kettle. The hot water causes the fat connected to the pig skin to melt and at the end of the day they are left with a kettle full of water and pig fat. Homemade lye leached from wood ash is added to the pot. I bet your wondering how they knew if the lye was strong enough?  The egg test, if the egg floats to the surface, the lye is good. After probably hours of stirring over that fire, it finally turned to soap. This soap would be the family's soap for the entire year.

I was so inspired by these tales of resourcefulness that I choose to name my new soap company after the iron kettles that the soap was made in…and that is how the Black Kettle Soap Company got its name.

The kettles in our photos sit outside the kitchen at Varner-Hogg Plantation, a Texas state historical site.

Formerly known as Patton Place, in 1849 this sugar cane plantation produced 275,000 pounds of sugar and 22,000 gallons of  molasses.