Teach Soap

Just wondering your opinions. Every year I gather as many of our black walnuts as I can from our trees that grow random on our farm. I have personally used the hull powder to dye stuff with and thinking about trying as a hair rinse within the next year because I am starting to see a few grays. But, my question is, what kind of a market do you think there is for the 2 different powders? I tried some of my hull powder in some melt and pour with Tea Tree oil and Dead Sea salts for soap scrub bars on the farm....turned it light purple(it naturally goes purple to brown to black), was hoping I added enough to go past the purple and get brown but maybe next time. We love the scrub soap, and it would be super great for elderly gardeners with thin skin too as it's gentle. (so I did another scrub soap but with celery seeds, tea tree oil, and orange peel cybilla frag. for rougher abrasive, turned out as a favorite with family, friends, & coworkers)

Is the powder made with the husk or the actual shell? We have many black walnut trees and I would like to try this. Can I ask how you make the powder? I really like the taste of walnuts but my grandkids think they taste like dirt. I wonder how they would like walnut soap.

MaryLou

I grind the hulls, after they turn brown and dry and the hulls that are still green are super for dying, they have a lot of 'juice' in them that turns even your hands deep brown for weeks. I have a whole paper carton box full of the shells right now as we had been discussing getting a heavy duty grinder for those last fall as I have only ever hammered a few here and there to try different things with.

Chiming in a bit late on this post --

If you're looking for a market for the hulls or powder, rather than for a product containing them, you may want to try reaching out to historical re-enactors. I do colonial/rev. war era crafts with a focus on inks and paints. Walnut hull ink is very accurate to the time, but finding a good source of them to make my own ink isn't easy. The ready-made walnut inks I've tried were expensive and too watery, so if you wanted to get into another (very messy) craft in ink-making, there would probably be some market for ink with the same crowd.

Cindy
Bathed In Moonlight