by Kristin Hartke, photography by Molly McDonald Peterson
Honey, avocado oil, tangerine extract: Sounds like a recipe for a tasty salad dressing, but it turns out that these lip-smacking ingredients are also good for the skin and are the basis for a burgeoning cottage industry in skin care products that focus on locally sourced and organic components.
Former city dweller Cindy De Vore started Valley Green Naturals a few years after she and her husband Art left metro Washington, D.C., to raise chickens and vegetables in the northern Virginia countryside. “Art bought a home soap-making kit,” De Vore recalls, “and we started experimenting with natural soap recipes using our own botanicals and honey from the hives at the neighboring vineyard.”
Many local skin care entrepreneurs – there are more than a dozen — seem to have gotten their start this way: experimenting with cocoa butters and essential oils as a fun hobby, and suddenly finding themselves with a lucrative business as interest grows in natural products hand-crafted by local businesses.
“When my daughter Mia was born I spent a lot of time learning about natural skin care because she was just so perfect,” says Meredith Miller of Little Sugar Naturals, “I just wanted to do what was best for her little body.” Her quest led her to craft her Baby-Topia line of products, starting with body butters whipped to the consistency of marshmallow fluff. She eventually moved on to try lotion making, “first with beeswax, then with a natural emulsifier derived from olives,” Miller says, while also remembering her rookie mistakes. “You have no idea the mess one can make with beeswax and no experience.”
It’s no surprise that these luscious balms, scrubs, and oils are inspired by nature. “I usually think up the names and combinations while I’m gardening,” confides Amanda Welch, the creative mind behind Grubby Girl, whose products start from seeds in her farm’s herb patch in the Green Springs, Va., national historic landmark district. Some of her popular creations include the invigorating City Slicker Scrub, made with coffee, cloves, and orange, and Horse-a-holic Massage and Bath Oil, which has a “muscle-relaxing combination of ginger and cinnamon and is scented with the essence of newly mown hay.”
Packaging is half the fun of these unique products — even Welch admits Horse-a-holic’s popularity among her customers is partially due to the name and design. However, customers don’t just use the products because they’re pretty or have fun names. Karen Buckley is a devotee of Valley Green Natural’s moisturizers: “Because the products are all natural, and locally made, I have a very high degree of confidence that I am using a quality product that has not sat on a shelf for who knows how long.” A Grubby Girl customer for ten years, Robin Patton finds that the products work even better as the years go by: “Commercial soaps are now too drying for me, especially in the winter. Similarly, I used to constantly apply skin lotions in the winter. Switching exclusively to Grubby Girl has been the fix.”
For consumers seeking natural and organic skin care products there is a seemingly endless supply of moisturizers, bath salts, and soaps available at commercial retailers like Whole Foods Market and The Body Shop, but purveyors of handmade skin care lines are finding a new breed of customers: locavores who want to purchase from the source, whether it’s from their local farmers market or an independent retailer.
“Buy Fresh-Buy Local campaigns have helped to motivate consumers to buy safer foods and know where their products come from. This movement has crossed lines into personal care products as well,” says Valley Green Naturals’ DeVore, who has seen her small company’s revenues increase 300 percent in the past year, despite the recession. Not only can customers meet the makers of these products when they visit the farmers market, they can get a firsthand look at the results: “I’m 49 years old,” notes DeVore, “so I’m at that point in my life where my fine lines and wrinkles serve as great testers for our anti-aging formulas.” Now that’s what we call putting a face on your product.
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The Capital Foodshed abounds with natural skin care options, much of it is handcrafted from farm-based products.
Here are some of our favorite lines:
Mac’s Smack
Hanover, VA
Petroleum and paraben-free lip balms.
www.macssmack.com
Valley Green
Broad Run, VA
Natural skin cleansers and moisturizers, hair care, lip balm, scrubs, natural bug repellant, and more.
www.valleygreennaturals.com
Little Sugar Naturals
Front Royal, VA
Paraben-free lotions, body butters, essential oils, and soaps.
www.littlesugarnaturals.com
Grubby Girl
Charlottesville, VA
Handcrafted soaps, oils, scrubs and lip balms with botanicals and honey from Meeting House Farm.
www.grubbygirl.com
The Bumble Bee Studio
Millwood, VA
Body butter, moisturizers, scrubs, bath products, and more.
www.thebumblebeestudio.com
Simply Pure Products
Bealeton, VA
Natural skin care, deodorant, and eczema products, all free of petroleum, paraben, synthetic preservatives, and aluminum.
www.simplypureproducts.com
Sweet Melissa’s Herbals
Afton, VA
Soaps (including a line using spent grains from Starr Hill Brewery), salves, massage oils, bath salts and more.
www.sweetmelissasherbals.com
Garden of Eve
North Garden, VA
Facial and body care, including lines for men and pregnant women, and custom blends.
www.gardenofeve.com
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Kristen Hartke writes about food, health, education and the arts, both locally and nationally. Her musings about food and family are featured in her blog Cooking on the Fly and she is currently having way too much fun researching her blog, Good Booze.
Thanks for the feature in Flavor! Actually, my quote was that our revenues have increased by more than 300% in the past year, despite the recession. Even in hard times, folks still need shampoos and soaps, and fortunately, many prefer to buy local!
Sorry about that, Cindy! We accidentally cut and pasted a prior-to-edit version of the article. We’ve corrected the text and it is the same as is in the magazine now. Thanks for letting us know!