PinkLady Gardeners’ Soap is one of the finest cleansing soaps for grit-encrusted hands fresh from the garden soil. This is an ideal stocking stuffer, can be used as a modest expression of gratitude and caring and is an outstanding and affordable little thank you for groups like committees or clubs.

Soap was created more than 6000 years ago. Around 5000 years ago, humans discovered that mixing animal fats with wood ash and water created a product that was good for cleansing, but it was not until 2800 BC that the first soap recipe was published by the Babylonians.  For centuries, soap was used to clean cooking utensils and other goods and for medicinal purposes. Soap was not used for personal hygiene like cleansing and bathing until the 1800s. The very first use of soap was for cleaning textiles.

Most of the items that we, at Harvesting History, sell have special stories, because we don’t choose products unless we use the products and know the manufacturers.

PinkLady Soap is made by Julia Holmes in her home, which until recently was near Stewartstown, PA, but is now in Delaware. This is the best gardeners soap we have ever used. The abrasive is cornmeal and tiny rosemary stem fragments, and this abrasive lasts until the bar of soap is gone. A bar of this soap can last months.

The nourishing oils in the soap caress your hands so that you can rub as hard as you like to get the soil out of all your cracked and crevassed appendages. It works and it works nicely.

The story behind the soap begins about 19 years ago when Julia’s best and dearest friend was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer and given months to live. All this woman wanted out of life was to see her children graduate from high school, but this was years away, and she only had months to live.

She was accepted into a radically aggressive treatment program which caused her skin to become very, very sensitive and extremely delicate.

Julia, who was standing by helplessly watching her friend suffer, decided to use her knowledge of chemistry and natural products to create a soap which soothed and freshened this delicate, sensitive skin. The soap she created worked much better than anyone ever dreamed would be possible. The doctors helping her friend referred other patients to her and gradually her soap became popular with many cancer patients undergoing treatment.

Julia then thought to create a soap for gardeners, because, being a gardener herself, she knew how difficult it was to clean up after a day in the garden without chafing your skin. So, her second product became PinkLady’s Gardeners’ Soap.

We have sold this product for years and have been using the product, personally, for about 12 years. It is an excellent product.

As for Julia’s best friend, well, the radical treatment program halted the progress of her disease.
She got to see all of her children graduate from high school and enter into adulthood. She lived for 9 years after her diagnosis. She passed in 2011.

Some will tell you that for 9 years she cheated death, but at Harvesting History, we know differently. For nine years the love of her family and friends nourished her mind and body and kept her strong in the battle against this terrible disease. Simple, but incredibly important gestures, like creating a soothing gentle soap enriched her life, her body and gave her the stamina she needed.

This little bar of soap may be small in size, but it has a huge heart. It is a gift of caring, of healing, of gentleness. It is a gift which gently, but unequivocably, inspires the user to live life like a gardener where all you really need is sunlight, water and warm, nourishing soil for hope to spring eternal like a seed in the spring.