What the Tomato Plants Taught Us About Patience

It has been a strange year for tomatoes. We planted them in April like always, watered them through May, and then just sort of waited. Some years they come in fast and heavy by the Fourth of July. This year they took their time. We were out there most evenings checking the vines, half convinced something had gone wrong, and then all at once, right around the second week of August, they showed up. Buckets of them. More than we know what to do with.

We got to talking about it at the workbench one night while we were cutting a batch of Cold Process Soap Bars, and somebody pointed out that soap works the same way. You mix the oils and the lye, you pour it, and then you wait. Four weeks minimum before a bar is ready to sell. Some of the specialty batches sit even longer. There is no shortcut for that. You cannot rush a chemical reaction any more than you can rush a tomato. The plant decides. The soap decides. We just show up and pay attention.

We think that is part of why we like this work. Everything else in the world seems to want to move faster this year. But a bar of soap does not care what year it is. It cures on its own schedule, same as it did when our grandmother was doing this in her kitchen. There is something steadying about that, especially in August, when the days are long and hot and everyone is a little worn thin. We like having something in our lives that simply will not be hurried.

The tomatoes did teach us one practical lesson, though, which is that garden work is hard on your hands. Between the dirt, the vines, and the sun, our hands get rough this time of year no matter how careful we are. We have been reaching for the Goat Milk Soap at the end of the day, mostly because it does not sting the little nicks you get from staking tomato cages, and because it leaves your hands feeling like hands again instead of sandpaper. If you garden, you know the feeling.

We also finally put the Silky Body Butter to real use this month. After a day of canning tomatoes, standing over a hot stove in a hot kitchen in a Virginia August, our hands and forearms feel dry in a way that lotion alone does not quite fix. The body butter sinks in slower and stays longer, which is exactly what you want after you have had your hands in hot water and vinegar all afternoon. We are not going to pretend it makes canning season fun. It just makes the aftermath a little kinder to your skin.

We put a few pints of tomatoes on the porch this week for the neighbors, the way we do most years when the garden gets ahead of us. Nobody around here seems to mind an unannounced bag of tomatoes on the steps. It is one of the nicer things about Ashland, honestly, this quiet passing back and forth of whatever somebody has too much of. We like to think our soap started out a little bit the same way, years ago, before it was ever a business. Just something we made too much of and started sharing.

If your own hands could use a little help after a summer of gardening or canning or just being outside in the heat, come see us. We keep the Goat Milk Soap and the Silky Body Butter on the shelf right next to each other for exactly this reason, and if you are in Ashland you are always welcome to stop by and pick some up yourself rather than wait on shipping.