Silver Creek Soap Maker Thrives at Harmony Heritage Farm

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Lydia Tevis had no idea at the age of 11 or 12 that her decision to learn to make soap would impact her life the way it has.

She was just a homeschooled kid with an itch to learn to do something new, useful and possibly profitable from her sheep’s milk. Now an adult with a family of her own, she says what she first loved about the craft still speaks to her.

“I love to make healthy products. That’s something I’ve been passionate about for a long time,” said Tevis, who owns Harmony Heritage Farm in Silver Creek with her husband, Richie. “And I love to craft. I’ve always loved that since I was little. I’ve always loved learning new things and being able to support our farm and some of the other things I wanted to do.”

After marketing her sheep milk soaps for a number of years locally as a youth, Tevis took a few years’ hiatus from marketing soaps to the public, but never really gave up the craft. Her knowledge came in handy in an unexpected way when she and Richie got married in 2012. Two weeks after their wedding, they found out that Richie had cancer and he began immediately undergoing chemotherapy. One of the side effects of his treatments was that he could not tolerate scents of any kind in any products, such as soap or laundry detergent.

“It kind of shifted our focus. We were more focused on what he was eating and, of course, what all the things in our home were made of,” Lydia said. “It made us more aware of the products we use, and I noticed there wasn’t a lot of those more natural products that were available and affordable here.”

The tagline that the Tevises use for Harmony Heritage Farm is “Regenerative Farming for Family and Future.” In addition to Lydia’s soapmaking, the couple keeps about 40 beef cows as well as heifers to grow their herd. They also have sheep, from which they get both milk and wool. The couple’s dream is for Richie to someday be able to work exclusively at the farm, but for the moment, he also works outside the home. Lydia is a stay-at-home mom who homeschools their daughter, Marilyn, 3.

Lydia said the soap business has not only brought in income to allow her to be at home with their daughter, but has also assisted the couple in becoming parents. Because of Richie’s past cancer diagnosis, they were not able to have a child together, so Marilyn was born by what is called snowflake adoption. That is where a couple undergoing in vitro fertilization allows remaining embryos to be adopted by another couple. While certainly much less expensive than IVF, Lydia explained, adopting a child as an embryo is costly, and marketing her line of soap products helped offset the cost. 

“Looking back, it’s really a blessing. We always wanted to adopt. We both had a big heart for that,” Lydia said of the experience of snowflake adoption. “We have her, and she’s the light of our life.”



Some Harmony Heritage Farm soap products can be purchased locally at The Bath Depot inside The Shady Lady in downtown Centralia. Lydia said the majority of her customers buy from her through either her website or a shop on Etsy.com. She offers sheep milk soaps, felted soap bars, shampoo bars, felted dish soap bars, non-toxic, vegan, biodegradable laundry soap, laundry stain sticks and wool dryer balls. 

Lydia sources as many ingredients as possible from her own farm, including sheep milk and wool, Calendula and also foraged berries and wild herbs. She values using sheep milk for her soap because it contains vitamins A, B, C and D as well as protein, calcium, potassium and magnesium and has a higher fat content than goat’s milk. 

Wool from her own sheep is used for both dryer balls and felted soaps, which are basically her sheep milk soap combined with wool. Wool has natural antimicrobial properties and the addition of a felted layer to the outside of the soap means all of the soap gets used and you have a built-in washcloth or sponge. In addition to being useful, Lydia also hand felts her soaps into characters such as ladybugs, chickens or sheep. Soap can take four to six weeks to make, including curing, but then the felted soaps take longer, including the hand felting to add designs.

Pre-COVID, Lydia was also hosting some soapmaking and felting classes at Eastside Urban Farm & Garden in Olympia. She said she hopes to be able to bring those classes back in the future when public gatherings are allowed.

More Information 

Learn more about Harmony Heritage Farm at Harmonyheritagefarm.com or @HarmonyHeritageFarm on Facebook.

Some of their products are also available at The Bath Depot inside The Shady Lady in downtown Centralia.