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TwitterClean living: Shepherd's Choice Farm: Shepherd's Choice Farm was born of a desire for a simpler way of life.
Wrap the containers in wool blankets, let the soap cure a few days, leave it for about a month and then cut it into bars. The Pusustas also sell Kathy's essential oils, and summer essentials like "Bug Dope" (which she says really repels black flies) and "Fisherman's Soap" (scented with anise, it's highly attractive to fish, she says)
Apr. 1--Kathy Pususta spent two decades cleaning other folks' houses, and then made soap when she got home. Laundry soap. Bathing soap. Soap that removed the itch from sensitive skin. And more soaps that she was itching to try.
"My mom made laundry soap," she recalled. "When we butchered a hog, we used the fat. One day, I was flipping through this old Mennonite cookbook from my home church and found my mother's Aunt Esther's toilet soap recipe. That was the first batch I made."
Drive along Viking Boulevard through East Bethel in northern Anoka County and the two llamas, 10 sheep and 20 chickens outside Pususta's Shepherd's Choice store pull you into the converted barn like a magnet.
The fresh eggs and homespun yarns lure the customers inside and keep the faithful returning. But it's Pususta's line of homemade soaps and cleaning products that truly differentiates Shepherd's Choice from other country stores.
It's a yarn in itself.
Bubbling with ideas
After Pususta made her first batch of soap, she gave away bars as Christmas gifts. And her friends came clean. They wanted more.
By 1987, when she and her husband, Tom, moved from northeast Minneapolis to East Bethel -- "a lifestyle change, a chance to embrace the simple life" -- Kathy's soap-making hobby was becoming more sophisticated than simple.
Pususta's basic formula remained the same: Dissolve lye in water. Let it cool. Mix and stir with fat until -- voila -- there's a chemical reaction called saponification. Stir the soap, let it thicken to the consistency of honey, and pour into a mold or box. Wrap the containers in wool blankets, let the soap cure a few days, leave it for about a month and then cut it into bars.
But something more was bubbling inside Pususta. She read books about soap and researched the values of essential oils with hope of creating a new fragrance.
A woman, whose house she cleaned, asked Pususta why she was still cleaning houses. Making soap is no longer your hobby, the woman said. The next fresh batch of soap Pususta made symbolized a fresh start.
Aunt Martha's recipe
She went into business. While Tom was earning a living as a Qwest salesman, Kathy was making soaps scented with lavender, lemongrass, cinnamon and exotic spice. She was perfecting moisturizers, shampoo bars, lip balms, body scrubs, products with old-fashioned names such as "Aunt Martha's Old Fashioned Drawing Salve."
"The person who lives in my childhood home [in Fairview, Mich.] knows what I do," Pususta said. "She has an Aunt Martha who used this drawing salve for skin cancer. She said nobody in her family was making it anymore, so she gave me the recipe.
"I have changed it somewhat. That's what you do with recipes, right? But, boy, are they [customers] thrilled to have a supply of it."
A variety of all Pususta's soaps, moisturizers and household cleaners are sold at the Shepherd's Choice store and Internet site, www.shepherdschoice.com. The Pusustas also sell Kathy's essential oils, and summer essentials like "Bug Dope" (which she says really repels black flies) and "Fisherman's Soap" (scented with anise, it's highly attractive to fish, she says).
Sure, Chickaleeta, the extremely social 8-year-old female llama, and her male counterpart, Simba, 6, are the charmers that turn strangers' heads while keeping coyotes, stray dogs and wolves at bay. The fresh eggs, which sell as fast as they can be displayed, add to the appetites of the curious.
The fresh yarn, Thursday Knit Nights and knitting classes for beginning spinners, and worsted weight sock wearers keep regulars returning with their No. 6 double-point needles.
But it's the scent of the soaps that open nostrils and turn heads.
Almond oatmeal? Or a Woodstock soap scented with patchouli and sandalwood? Why not? Peace, love and nonconformity still matter, Pususta says. Far out.
"A lot of people who stop tell me they've been driving by here for years," Pususta said. "They come into this converted barn and they can't believe it."
Paul Levy --612-673-4419
TO FIND OUT MORE
Shepherd's Choice website is www.shepherdschoice.
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Credit: Star Tribune, Minneapolis
