Healing Salve. If I were on the proverbial desert island and could only take one Rainwater Farm products, this would be it. I like it so much that if I had to hawk it off the back of a truck, I would.
Do you suffer from cracked fingers, cuticles or heels? How about sunburns, poison ivy, bee stings, bruises, cuts? Psoriasis or eczema? Scars? All of these maladies can be helped with Rainwater Farm Healing Salve.
My feet are not a thing of beauty. During the summer especially, I get cracks and boy do they hurt. I will apply the Healing Salve three times, put on socks and go to bed. The next morning the crack has healed and I am on my way.
The ingredients in this salve simple, nourishing, healing: olive oil, beeswax, calendula, comfrey, goldenseal, plantain, lavender and Vitamin E oil. Just as important is what is not in the Healing Salve: No parabens (PABA), no petroleum. It is difficult to find lotions or creams without these two ingredients. Petroleum acts like an estrogen on your skin. The most common form of breast cancer loves this extra estrogen – it is what it eats to grow. Another problem is these petroleum products end up in the water system and now fish get this extra estrogen. Male fish are unable to reproduce because they have too much estrogen. They are becoming more adrogynous. If something isn’t good for human beings, it is not good for the environment.
Parabens are found in tumors. We do not know if the parabens cause the tumors or if they take up residence in already formed tumors. All we know is they end up together. Not something I want to risk.
All that’s in the Healing Salve are pure ingredients, made by nature. On a desert island or in your nightstand drawer, it’ll be one product you never want to be without.
This week brings with it the the longest days of the year. Along with that comes mosquito season, at least here in Maryville, Tennessee.
Our family isn’t too fond of using chemical-based bug repellents. Spraying the kids down with unnatural sprays before they went outside to play just didn’t seem right, and so we turned to nature to see if we could find any solution. As it turns out, there are more than a few natural bug blockers (I guess Mother Nature knows best!), and we gathered them up and put them into a few of our products. It’s something we now feel pretty good about, as some studies have shown that repellents like DEET can have harmful effects (this one by a Duke Pharmacologist is particularly compelling).
Citronella, Pennyroyal, Eucalyptus and Lemongrass essential herbal oils are all distasteful to bugs, but are safe for use by humans. We’ve combined these four oils and have put them in both our Camper Soap and the Bug Off spray. Shower with the soap, or, before going outside sprinkle a few drops of water onto the bar and glide gently over your skin–you’ll love how it moisturizes your skin with olive and coconut oil, and bugs will hate that it repels them. Our family obviously swears by it, and use it before heading out to the garden or to the ballpark, but we’ve also had great feedback from customers throughout the years. Kathleen from Denver told me her mother is allergic to mosquito bites and therefore cannot go out if there is even a slight possibility of mosquitoes. She tried the Camper soap and does not get bitten any more. My favorite story is from Buffy Marie. She took the soap on a safari in Africa. Every morning she rubbed on the soap while her cohorts sprayed on the DEET. After two week she received only one mosquito bite (probably missed a place!) while her friends were eaten up.
And by the way, the soap and bug spray are just as effective against horse flies, black flies and chiggars. So get out and enjoy the great outdoors this summer without the worry of being eaten up.
No matter how much you may try to avoid it when weeding and doing other spring gardening, poison ivy is sometimes inevitable. Lucky for you, we have a few products in our arsenal that might help make your battle a bit easier.
Your first line of defense is either Summer Mint or Springtime Gardener soap. If you’ve been outside, and have been exposed (or potentially exposed) to poison ivy, use this soap and make sure you suds all areas of your body. Do it twice, or even three times. This should prevent any outbreak of poison ivy on your skin. Pure soap or “lye” soap — not the detergent bars you find at the grocery store–has the ability to cut through the irritable poison ivy oils that cause outbreaks and wash it away from the skin. Also the oatmeal in these soaps gets in all the cracks making sure all of your skins surface that was exposed to the poison ivy is now exposed to the soap.
If you’ve already experienced an outbreak, then don’t fret–you can still treat it naturally. First, wash the affected area carefully with a pure, natural soap–our Oatmeal Lavender has the ability to soothe naturally and gently, as well as remove any residual oils that may exist. You can even leave a thin soap film on the affected area: this protective layer will help contain the infection and soothe the rash. After that, apply a thin layer of our Rainwater Farm Healing Salve. The all-natural, chemical free olive oil and beeswax base will soothe the itch, and the healing properties of the infused calendula, comfrey, goldenseal, and plantain along with the vitiman E oil and lavender will help heal the skin.
We received this “Salve testimonial” from Sandy S. in Zeeland, Michigan:
“I purchased your healing salve last in April with the intention of trying to heal my rough feet. In all honesty I didn’t really use it because the lavendar fragrace was a little overwhelming to me. I left it in the drawer however thinking that I would use it for another purpose. What a blessing that I did not use it for my heels. In November I contracted a very serious case of poison Ivy. I had two steriod shots, steriod cream, ivy washes and nothing was helping. I also tried many different types of compresses hoping to literally draw out the infection. My right arm was just a mess and he infection then spread to many different areas of my body as well as going internal. After trying just about everything I saw the jar of healing salve in my drawer and thought well why not. At least if anything it will help with the healing and with all the wonderful oils maybe it will not scar. I began nightly generously massaging the salve into my open sores. I then covered the area with pure soft white cotton socks used as sort of a sleeve and slept all night. Not nly did it help with the itching but the healing process was just remarkable. I now have just very light discoloration that I know will go away with time but the new skin is just as soft and beautiful as it can be. Many of my friends and relatives have been stunned by how good my arm looks. I think the steroids may have helped to some degree but in addition the healing salve worked miracles with the recovery process. I also have learned to love the smell that I idn’t like before as I now associate it with wonderful healing. Thank you Collette for your wonderful product.”
Sodium lauryl Sulfate is the main ingredient in most shampoos and liquid soaps. The problem with it is two-fold. First, it acts like an estrogen on your body. At least 60% of what you put on your body gets absorbed into your blood stream. We do not need more estrogen. We produce what we need and when we have too much, there are problems. Breast cancer survivors understand this. They stay away from SLS because they know that the most common form of breast cancer feeds on estrogen. Secondly, sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) is the reason your hands feel dry and even crack. Our skin is naturally acidic. When you wash them, you are changing the ph of your skin, changing it from acidic to alkaline. The SLS blocks the skins ability to return to its natural acidic state and this causes your skin to dry out. Why do they put SLS in soaps and shampoos? It is cheap.
Our Foaming Liquid Soap is made with more expensive ingredients like olive, coconut and castor oils. It is not a detergent (which means we put lye in our soap). You will notice that when you wash your hands you don’t have to reach for the lotion (which usually has petroleum and parabens in it and only add to your skin problems – but as this is a digression, I will blog about this later). We have choices to choose from: Rosemary Mind, Lavender, and Lemon. The only problem is once you’ve used our soap, you never want to go back to the other stuff.
Welcome to Rainwater Farm’s web page. I have been dragged–kicking and screaming–into the new millenium and after two years of false starts, our website is finally up! I hope you enjoy seeing our products online.
In honor of this launch, we are offering a 20% discount for the first two weeks if you order online (good until April 11th). Come visit us and see what is happening on the farm. You can find out where I will be selling our soap, any new products, and what’s happening with our family.
Discount code: new20