Carolyn Hitchcock, owner of Front Porch Soap & Gift Co. and longtime Spoon River Electric Cooperative member, has taken a hobby she stumbled upon in semi-retirement and built a shop beloved by her Lewistown community. That hobby — making soap — has since led to an expansive product inventory.
The former medical technician and OSHA inspector says she originally was just looking for something to do. First, it was beekeeping. “I had beginner’s luck,” she says. “You always have some left that you probably aren’t going to bottle for human consumption, but it can be used for other things. So, I googled things to make with honey.”
One of those things was soap. “[I] fell in love with soapmaking, and it wasn’t long before the family was saying, ‘We don’t have room for anymore,’” she laughs. Her husband Mike ended up taking some of her soaps with him to the local coffee shop.
“[People] started coming back to him, saying, ‘Hey, I love that soap … where can we get more?’” she adds. “So, I opened a tiny little shop on the front porch.”
Hitchcock prefers to make cold process soap. The first step is creating a lye solution. For this, she uses distilled water. “You don’t want any metals in your water,” she says. “I make my lye water up and let it cool. [It] gets very, very hot as you add the lye into the water.”
Next, she preps her oils while the lye solution cools. When the correct temperature is reached, blending begins. Shortly after, she pours the blend into molds. “We leave it on the cure racks for six weeks, and that’s strictly for the water to evaporate to make a hard bar,” she explains. “[That way,] once you get that bar into water and you’re using it, it’s not becoming mush.”
The process is called saponification, which produces soap and glycerin. “[Once] it’s gone through the saponification process, there’s no longer any active lye in the soap,” Hitchcock adds. “[And,] if you don’t have glycerin in the bar soap you’re using, you’re basically not using soap. You’re using detergent on your skin.”
Early on in this venture, Hitchcock sustained a broken bone, and her daughter, cosmetologist Tonya Sidwell, came alongside to help. “She’s been with me ever since,” says Hitchcock. “She was a perfect fit for the business.”
In 2014, they formed an LLC. “When that small shop got busy, I built a new shop,” she explains. “We were five years in the small shop, and then five years in the new shop, and the business has just steadily grown.” That growth has included small, handmade bath and body products and gift lines. She also has a variety of products for babies, pets and men.
Her husband Mike was one of the first to experience the healing benefits of her soaps. “He said, ‘I don’t have itchy skin in the winter,” she says. “[Now] he won’t use anything but the soap I make. It’s just a healthier soap for the skin.”
Customers have also commented on the healing properties of her other products, particularly in caring for surgical incisions and burns, even nosebleeds. Hitchcock attributes it to the natural ingredients she uses, like goat milk, honey and colloidal oatmeal.
With most of their inventory being handmade, store hours are limited. “We need those hours in the kitchen if we’re going to continue to offer people healthy, handmade, small batch,” she explains. “Those are the keywords — small batch [and] homemade.”
Even with all the hard work and fastidious attention to detail, Hitchcock says that her original love of making soap has endured. “We’ve really enjoyed it. We look forward to it,” she says. “It’s given us a real sense of purpose.”
Front Porch Soap & Gift Co.
14242 E. County 14 Highway, Lewistown
309-258-9655
Facebook.com/front.porch.soap
HOURS
Fri: Noon to 6 p.m.
Sat: 10 a.m.-4 p.m.
*Store is closed in January. It will reopen Feb. 7, 2025.
