Mommy's Healing Salve from  

Delights of the Earth

by Maya

Made in Westhampton, MA, Delights of the Earth salves and balms are made traditionally, with minimal ingredients. The whole line looks promising for various treatments, but I opted to try Mommy's Healing Salve, designed specifically for "minor scrapes, cuts, and burns." To be quite honest, I chose this particular one because I am fairly clumsy (my mom always called me Grace, and my ex lovingly referred to me as Stumbles; I truly didn't mind). As a person who tends to bump into things, I often find myself with unexplained nicks-particularly on my hands. I thought that this wonderfully smelling salve might help to speed the healing time of these cuts, and I was right. Made with a mix of pure vegetable oils and beeswax, along with calendula, eucalyptus, and thyme, the moisturizing and antiseptic properties did, indeed, help my scrapes to heal quicker than if I'd just left them alone. Perhaps the best use that I've found, however, is healing the raw skin under my nose during and after a head cold. All of that nose blowing was starting to wreak havoc on the delicate skin around my nostrils, but I began applying this healing salve shortly after the cold came on, and continued to apply it throughout the duration. My skin quickly healed from the initial tenderness, and didn't feel sore again thereafter. Amazing stuff, for whatever seems to be ailing me. And let's be honest: with nicknames like "Grace" and "Stumbles," I decided to just carry Mommy's Healing Salve in my purse. I haven't yet regretted having it.

About Delights of the Earth

Delights of the Earth was established in 2001 in Westhampton, MA. Our mission is to make great quality organic and natural products for all who are label & ingredient savvy. All our products are handcrafted, cruelty-free & additive-free. We use fairly traded, organic & sustainably harvested products like green tea, lavender, coffee, coconut oil, palm oil & sunflower oil. Seasonal ingredients come from local farm stands. Our products are 100% vegetarian and biodegradable! Our soap bar labels are TREE FREE (95% post-consumer & 5% banana fibre).

Conventional Soap vs Handmade Soap! by HSMG

Much of the soap available in the store today is not really soap at all, but a detergent. Detergents are a petroleum based product, like gasoline and kerosene. Have you ever noticed how regular soap leaves your skin feeling dry, itchy and tight? Alkali, the most common irritant in soap is often the culprit. Others ingredients in mass-marketed soap have been proven harmful to human health and can cause severe skin irritations in some people. These include ingredients such as DEA, Isopropyl Alcohol, BHT and Triclosan (commonly found in anti-bacterial soap). The most common ingredient in conventional bar soaps is sodium tallowate. It is the natural product of combining tallow, or beef fat, with lye. The attractiveness for tallow for mass producing soap is that it processes quickly, produces a hard bar of soap and is cheap and plentiful.

Most handcrafted soap-makers use food-quality, natural ingredients, starting with a variety of vegetable oils such as olive, coconut, or palm, or they may use purified tallow or lard. To these might be added specialized oils, nut butters or seed extracts to bring the desired qualities to the finished bar. Fragrance oils or plant-based essential oils are added for scent. For color or texture, soap-makers often use cosmetic-grade pigments or dyes, botanicals, herbs, spices or other natural ingredients. For those with sensitivities, many soapmakers also make simple soap with no additives or scent. Besides all the wonderful ingredients that may be in handcrafted soap, perhaps the biggest advantage of handcrafted soap is in the soap-makers themselves, each of whom invests their care and attention to detail into every batch and bar. When you use a bar of handcrafted soap, you know it was made with the personal touch of a local soap-maker.

Berkshire Organics also carries Delights of the Earth Shampoo & Soap Bars All $2.99 ea!