It took a good 20-30 minutes, but when it was done, we tried the butter with crackers and it was really good! It was the sweetest butter I've ever tasted and I know it was all natural because I watched it being made from fresh cream. Very cool!
The kids got to make their own candles and they thought that was pretty cool. I remember doing that lots of times, but it has been years and it was fun to see it again. We didn't actually get to make soap, but we learned how it's made and we "donated" $5 to get a bar of homemade soap. I didn't know how soap was made, but apparently it's composed of the salts from animal or vegetable fat. Some sort of alkali solution (usually lye) is used to break down the fat. Well, it turns out one way to make lye is to run water through wood ash and lye is found in the runoff. So in a weird indirect way, ash has been used for many years to clean things. I always thought ash was dirty ...
The guy at the booth told us a legend of an ancient Roman city where the women (yes, women - I'm not sexist, just historically realistic) would wash their clothes in the river near a temple where animal sacrifices were done. They noticed over time that a certain part of the river would produce suds as they washed and get their clothes cleaner. The story claims that they discovered lye and soap because of this circumstance - the products were created as the rain would wash away the remains of the animal sacrifices, mingling the animal fat with the lye from the wood ash. I looked it up later and it looks like it's unlikely to be a true story, but it's kind of interesting. It made me think of a prophecy by Ezekiel that a river would flow from the temple in Jersualem and heal the Dead Sea. Ok, that's probably a stretch, but it's where my mind went. I don't claim that my thought processes are always logical.
It was a fun story and a really fun day at the festival. Now go buy that butter churn and tell me what you think.
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