For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Evie Cotton. I am the mother of two young handfuls and the wife of one older handful. As the mother of two very active kids I have struggled over the years with managing the work/mother/wife reality. For my husband I feel like I need to work long hours in order to help out with the family bills but as a mother I realize how much my children miss me when I am gone. It is more than the kids just missing me though. When I am working 8-12 hour days, I am not at home to make sure that my kids are doing their homework, they do not have the emotional support that they need to cope with their changing bodies and hormones, their grades drop and they become very agitated. I come home from work very haggard, without the ability to cope with angry, whining children. They become clingy and I become resistant to that cling. I’m too tired to clean the house or make dinner and can’t wait until my kids bedtime. This vicious cycle is not good for me or my children, so with that in mind I decided that some things needed to change in my life.
Early last year I discovered Urban Homesteading. Urban Homesteading was a new concept to me but with the encouragement of others and with the knowledge that past generations lived the simple lifestyle with no problem, I decided to make the leap into self sustainability. I had no experience growing my own vegetables and in fact killed almost all of my first years vegetables with the exception of carrots, cabbage, zucchini and Luffa. By the end of summer, my husband told me that he had no intention of ever eating another zucchini or head of cabbage again. It looked like my experiment in self sustainability had failed. Or so I thought…
Our first frost came quite unexpectedly last fall and forced me to harvest my luffa a few weeks sooner than I had planned. For those of you who don’t know about luffa, I’ll explain. Luffa grows on a vine very similarly to a cucumber or gourd. It has large beautiful flowers which then produce what look like giant Zucchini. These giants can grow up to three feet in length if given a long enough growing season. My biggest were a little over two feet in length at harvest. When fully grown and mature a luffa will lose all of its water weight. The outside peel is removed and inside you will find a dense fibrous sponge with hundreds of black seeds. Luffa is not only a great sponge but it is also highly nutritious if it is harvested young, before it becomes fibrous. I like to use young luffa in stews or salads for a little something extra.
One of the keys to self sustainability is not only producing food to eat but also coming up with an income to use. I toyed with the idea of just selling my luffa but because I had so few from my shortened season I decided to use it as gifts for my family. Christmas was coming and because I had quit my job by this time, I had no income for gift giving. After several failed experiments with creating a quality product that family members would actually like to receive as gifts, I found soap making. Soap making allowed me to use my home grown luffa in new ways, imbedding them in bars of soap. I was so proud of my soap that I posted photos of them on facebook. Before I knew it, friends and friends of friends were clamouring to get their hands on my soap. Thus my soap making business was born.
Through trial and error I have learned a great deal about soap making and have had the opportunity to sell my soaps at various women’s conferences and flea markets all over Indiana.
Now I have a special opportunity to turn this into a real business. I’ve been invited to sell my soaps at the Johnny Appleseed Festival in Ft. Wayne, IN this September. This is an exciting prospect which will provide me with the ability to reach a larger audience and may even provide me with enough income to sustain a permanent store front in my own community. Although it eliminates much of my travel expenses while enabling me to better provide for my family, it requires more up front money than I currently have on hand.
At the suggestion of several friends and family members, I decided to try a crowdfunding experience with Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a company that allows people to donate to various projects with the understanding that if the funding goal is not reached within a small amount of time, no money will change hands. This puts me in a tenuous position; I’m running on faith that the wonderful people in my community will come together to help me on my way. We only have 23 days to raise the funds, so the urgency is very real. Please Please give to my kickstarter. Donors will receive my soaps as well as my thanks!
To view my webpage please click here.
As an extra thank you to my friends at The Homemaker’s Journal, I have created a gift. For every donation at the $5 level I will enter you in a drawing to win one bar of luffa soap AND one bar of either my Johnny Appleseed limited edition soap or one of my Pride and Prejudice inspired soaps (there will be three winners). For donations at the $25 or higher level, I will send you a gift basket with five soaps in addition to the listed gift.
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