Craftspeople At Farm Soap Co in Dorset Silvana de Soissons creates natural soaps.

Clean Living

Silvana de Soissons has taken over an old dairy farm in Dorset to launch Farm Soap Co. Here she produces her own range of natural, ethical, plant-based soaps, with a focus on home-grown botanicals and other locally sourced ingredients

WORDS PHOEBE JAYES PHOTOGRAPHS CAROLE DRAKE

Silvana de Soissons in her garden, where she grows her own botanicals for use in her natural soaps.

Above Flowerheads including lavender and calendula are snipped from plants for drying. Above right Calendula seedheads drying for use in Silvana’s soaps. I n the cheese room of what used to be a dairy farm in Cheselbourne, Dorset, you’ll find curing racks stacked not with hunks of cheddar or Dorset Blue Vinny, but with petal-scattered soap bars, great orange moulding blocks and countless glass bottles of essential oils. Here, whiffs of lavender, geranium, pine and clementine have replaced the more earthy odours of fermentation and cow flank. “Saponification is the name given to the process of soap making,” explains Silvana de Soissons of Farm Soap Co., “and it’s just like cheese making. You’ve got to be very accurate.”

Silvana is no slouch. Hailing from Italy but raised on farms all over Africa, she moved to England to take a degree in Economics at the University of Bath, before embarking on a corporate career in the capital where she dabbled in finance, marketing, sales and retail. After years of hard graft, she decided to forge a new path, abandoning her city career to start up a food and lifestyle business in Bath. So began the very successful The Foodie Bugle, later sold to another family so she could turn her attentions to a new project at The Newt in Somerset. In this recently renovated country estate and gardens, Silvana established a farm shop where you will find all sorts of fresh produce grown on site, as well as lifestyle goods. Once her work at The Newt was wrapped up, Silvana once again moved on to pastures new – and so began the Farm Soap Co. The natural soap and skincare business went live, unintentionally on the first day that the UK went into lockdown. Luckily for Silvana, the pandemic didn’t affect sales. In fact, it was quite the opposite. As hand-washing became something of a national pastime, soap was just the product everyone wanted – along with tinned tomatoes and a lot of toilet roll, of course. The endeavour swiftly took off. “I’ve been so busy I can’t tell you!” she exclaims. “Within six months I already had to move somewhere else to be able to upscale.”

But the Farm Soap Co.’s success is not just down to fortuitous timing. Silvana’s enthusiasm, passion and knowledge shines through. “I did a lot of research before I invested my money in this business,” she explains, “and I’d previously worked as a buyer of

skincare products in retail. It’s shocking how many chemicals there are in most toiletries, including those meant for babies. The skincare toiletries industry is huge, and dominated by massive corporates that use chemicals derived from the petrochemical industry. Thankfully, there’s recently been a revolution in the skincare industry, which has given rise to more small, local businesses and plant-based products.”

That’s exactly what you can expect from the Farm Soap Co.’s range – each product is vegan and chemical-free, made without plastic and using transparently sourced materials. In fact Silvana grows many of her ingredients in her garden and last year enjoyed a brilliantly successful harvest due to the hot summer weather. But the keen plantswoman has plans to improve and expand on this front. “I should have started growing way earlier in the year and organised successional planting, so I’m going to get a greenhouse or a polytunnel for this growing year,” she explains. “I’m also going to have a bed dedicated to cut flowers so I can start sharing the beauty of dried flowers with my customers.”

So how does Silvana make her soaps? The first step is to create essential oils using home-grown botanicals. Petals, leaves and flowerheads are steeped in locally produced base oils including almond, flax, rapeseed, borage and hemp, and left to infuse in the sun for a month. Once the plant’s properties have transferred to the oil, the soapmaking process can begin. Saponification occurs when an acid and an alkaline meet, and since oils are acidic, an alkaline substance called lye is necessary to complete the process. This is where it gets complicated. In order to mix the essential oils with the lye to form soap, it’s important that the two substances are at the same temperature – somewhere around 40-48°C. “I can almost make soap blindfolded now, but when you first start, it’s important to have two thermometers and to keep checking them as the liquids cool,” Silvana emphasises. “It can be a challenge to make sure the temperatures are right if you’ve got a lot of batches on the go. Then, once you’ve combined the liquids, you pour them into moulds to set overnight.”

Silvana has a wealth of knowledge about the beneficial properties of plants. Her childhood was

Above Freshly harvested herbs are hung upside down from frames in the garden to dry naturally. Below left Macerated calendula oil is sieved through a muslin cloth prior to use in the soaps. Below middle Calendula petals are left to steep in a mixture of base oils. Below right Unctuous chunks of rich shea butter, a natural moisturiser, ready to be melted down.

spent outdoors, and this is perhaps what cemented her love of all things natural. “My family grew all sorts of fruit, vegetables and herbs,” she explains, “We were usually located about eight hours from the nearest shop, so there was never any “popping out” to go and pick something up. My mum picklepotted everything.” Now Silvana concentrates on growing plants with antibacterial and antioxidant properties. There’s the geranium soap, for example, with its antimicrobial, anti-ageing properties, or the pine soap that soothes itchy and inflamed skin. The Dorset Sea Salt bar is made using salt that threebrother team ‘Dorset Sea Salt Co.’ collects on the nearby Jurassic Coast. This raw material is more of a challenge than the other ingredients Silvana works with, since sodium chloride sets quickly and firmly, creating a need for a speedy transferral of liquid into soap mould. It is worth the effort, according to Silvana: “Sea salt is one of the oldest ingredients used in spas, and it is extremely good for your skin as it detoxes, mineralises and cleanses.”

Although she has created many beautifully scented products, Silvana’s personal favourite is her unfragranced soap. “It’s a good, old-fashioned soap that I can use to wash my skin, my hair and even the dog! It’s just so liberating to smell completely clean, and then I put a few drops of an essential oil like lavender on my wrists to feel calm.”

Perusing the Farm Soap Co.’s online shop reveals Silvana’s natural skincare range, as well as carefully chosen products along the same lines. Customers can order a soap dish handmade in Wiltshire by Libby Ballard Ceramics, or one made in Somerset by You Are Farm. Silvana is on the lookout for talented local makers and hopes to expand her curated line to include textiles such as towels and bathrobes. Once she upscales, she wants to create further products

Above left Homegrown lavender is used for its calming and antibacterial properties. Above centre A mixture of sea salt and seaweed harvested locally from Dorset’s Jurassic Coast. Above right The liquid soap is poured into moulds to set overnight. Below The finished bars of soap, moulded into the Farm Soap Co.’s signature rounded shape. like calendula, borage and seaweed soaps, oils for the whole body and herbal teas specifically for skincare. And if reading this has piqued your interest in the art of saponification, you may be in luck. “At some point, I would love to teach workshops,” Silvana muses. “But the most important thing for now is that every product from the Farm Soap Co. is handmade in small batches, with purpose and honesty. You cannot get purer than that.” n

Visit farmsoapco.com to order products, or follow Silvana on Instagram @farmsoapco

IMAGES MIMI CONNOLLY; NICOLA STOCKEN; EMMA GUSCOTT PHOTOGRAPHY; ANNAÏCK GUITTENY

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