In   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, Silvana forged a new path and started up a food and lifestyle business in Bath. So began the very successful The Foodie Bugle. Later, she sold it to another family to turn her attentions to a new project at The Newt in Somerset. In this country estate and gardens, Silvana established a farm shop offering fresh produce grown on site and lifestyle goods. 

Once her work at The Newt was wrapped up, Silvana once again moved on to pastures new. 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’ve already got 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 rang. 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. Last year she 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.”

Silvana has a wealth of knowledge about the beneficial properties of plants. Her childhood was 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 pickle-potted 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. Meanwhile, the pine soap soothes itchy and inflamed skin. The Sea Salt bar is made using salt that three-brother team ‘Dorset Sea Salt Co.’ collects on the Jurassic Coast. This raw material is extremely good for your skin as it detoxes, mineralises and cleanses.

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 soap-making process can begin. Saponification occurs when an acid and an alkaline meet. Since oils are acidic, an alkaline substance called ‘lye’ is necessary to complete the process. 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. This should be 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 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.”

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. 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. For example, customers can order a soap dish handmade in Wiltshire by Libby Ballard Ceramics.

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  like calendula, borage and seaweed soaps, oils for the whole body and herbal teas specifically for skincare.

Finally, 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.”

This article featured in March 2021 issue of The English Garden. Since then, Silvana has moved her business to Abbotsbury in Dorset, where visitors can also browse a shop filled with Farm Soap Co. products.

Silvana also published the book Natural Skincare For All Seasons in May 2022. It is a modern, practical guide on how to grow and make your own skincare products, no matter how big your garden. Order your copy here.

Discover more about the Farm Soap Co. and browse the product range at farmsoapco.com

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