Nourishing Skin Care with Renee from hardlotion.com (KYF009)

In today’s podcast, I’m visiting with Renee Harris from hardlotion.com. Raising, saving, and preparing food can take a toll on our skin and we should nourish and repair damaged skin with nourishing products. Such as… hard lotion! Frankly, there’s nothing like it.

What is hard lotion, you ask? Hard lotion is lotion that is solid at room temperature. You gently rub it in your hands and your hands warm it up, then you spread it where ever you need it — cracked and dry feet, itchy red hands, rough elbows… Between dishes and outside chores like gardening and milking, my hands used to get really bad. Red, itchy, cracked — quite painful. Ever since I started using Renee’s hard lotion bars, my hands don’t even get red itchy or cracked anymore. I also put it on my feet just about every night. The stuff is downright miraculous! I love it.

Renee’s hard lotion uses just three ingredients as the base: shea butter, coconut oil and beeswax. These three ingredients can be tweaked — as you’ll hear in the podcast — to create all kinds of nourishing skin care goodies!

You might be wondering how hard lotion relates to the theme of my podcast. That’s a good question! Here’s how. First of all, raising, saving, and preparing food takes a toll on our skin at times and just like we want to nourish our bodies with good food, we should nourish and repair damaged skin with nourishing products like Renee’s hard lotion. Also, Renee and her family embrace traditional cooking and real food, and we can learn a lot from her about how they balance that priority with running a business out of their home.

Renee and I kick off a giveaway in this episode! You can win 1 of 2 $50 gift certificates right here (open through 11/4/12). Also, Renee gives all of you a coupon code — 15% off anything at hardlotion.com using coupon code KnowYourFood through 12/15/12. So generous! Thank you, Renee! 🙂

So… that’s what’s ahead on today’s episode of Know Your Food with Wardee.

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What’s in Episode #9?

In this episode of Know Your Food with Wardee, I’m visiting with Renee Harris, owner and hard lotion maker at MadeOn Skin Care Products.

Here’s Renee’s story:

“My first lotion bar was created out of desperation, mixed with creativity. The creativity came from the pleasure I got from making things from my kitchen for my family, whether it was soap, bread, mung sprouts or our family special “apple kefir” that resembles Martinelli’s sparkling juice.

The desperation came, literally, from my hands. I had the worst pain from the tips of my fingers that were often covered in Band-aids from the cuts and splits from my daily activities and extremely dry skin. My hands were my most important tools, but they caused me intense suffering… until the lotion bar.

Not only did that first lotion bar heal up my skin within days, but we tried it with my son’s seasonal eczema, and I was ecstatic that his pain also ended with the lotion bar.

Something that was so easy to make turned into a family business after my older boys and I took it to the farmer’s market for testing. I received great feedback from customers at the market, as well as several online groups who agreed to test it and fill out surveys.

I KNOW dry skin and the pain it brings. Because I’ve enjoyed the interaction that I get from my customers, I’ve created DIY videos for the lotion, as well as other products that we’ve developed based on customer request and our own family’s needs. Whether you purchase here, or create your own, give it a try and I believe you’ll be very happy with the results. Let me know how it works for you! –Renee”

What an awesome story!

By the way, about Renee’s DIY stuff. Some of the DIY items are eBooks that teach you how to make your own nourishing skin care products.

Here’s Renee’s family. 🙂

And now to the episode. Here are the questions I asked Renee. The answers are inside the podcast; click play.

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• Tell us about your family, your life, and your business.
• Tell us the story of the lotion bars — how did you come up with them and why is “hard” better?
• What does each ingredient in the lotion bar do for the skin?
• You’ve also branched out into other “hard lotion” products like lip balm, diaper rash cream, sunscreen, bug balm, whipped body butter? How can you start with the same ingredients as the lotion but end up with these different products? What do you tweak to get a different end product?
• Serving healthy food is important to your family. How do you balance feeding your family right with the demands of a home business and also homeschooling?
• With most people there’s a defining moment or moments that make them change course to get where they are today. Is there a moment or moment in your life that led you to where you are today?

Also in this episode, I gave a shout out to Anna and Jakob who were featured in this week’s farm tour: Northern Home Garden. Check out their geodesic dome greenhouse that allows them to extend their growing season past the 100 frost-free days. They grow lots of food without owning a speck of land.

iTunes update: If you subscribed to my podcast on iTunes early on, I must ask you to subscribe again as that original listing has been deprecated. This is because I had to start all over again at iTunes. My original submission to iTunes didn’t include the right information — like cover image or even my name as the author of the podcast. I figured out how to fix it, but unfortunately iTunes doesn’t let you update a listing –you have to start over. So I started over right here. Please resubscribe!

You’ll also hear my responses to a question asked on the podcast voice line. Here’s what Kerry from Wasilla, Alaska asked:

• What do you feed cows and chickens in the winter when there’s no pasture? If you sprout, how much should you feed and how do you do it?

I shared what we do in the winter, and then for more information sprouting grains for feed question, I referred Kerry to this post from Promiseland Farm. Also, I recommended the book, Keeping a Family Cow, and the forum of the same name.

Here are other links mentioned in this episode:

• MadeOn Hard Lotion

Enjoy this episode. 🙂 See below for how to submit questions and what’s coming next.

For past or current episodes, check out the Know Your Food with Wardee podcast archives.

What’s Coming Up…

Next week, I’m visiting with Joshua and France from BeyondthePeel.net, creators of The Whole Food Jump Start, a week-long workshop in embracing whole foods.

It’s Your Turn

Questions for Renee about hard lotion? Please feel free to ask. 🙂

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