The City Girl Farmer

Jon found an article about how you can make soap from a yucca and suggested we try it some time as a home school project.  Yuccas are plentiful around here and they are a weed that can take over your pasture, so it seemed like a good idea to make use of the weed.   In fact, I learned yucca has another name:  soapweed.  Who knew?

So off Thomas and I went to stalk the kill.

Returning victorious with hands full of yucca root

We found a decent sized plant and went about digging it up.  Yucca roots grow deep and we dug a hole about 2 1/2 feet deep and still didn’t get the whole root out.

We came home and started to prepare the roots for the food processor.  They have a thick, bark-like covering, but on the inside they are white and have a consistency much like ginger.

Yucca roots

Cutting the bark away from the root

Yucca root cleaned and ready to be chopped up

After the roots were peeled, I washed them, chopped them up and put them into the food processor.  What came out was a creamy white puree about triple in volume to what had gone in.

Processed yucca root

I added about 2 cups of water to get the soap into solution and then strained it.  We added some essential oil and voila!  Soap!  It seems to work well and it’s good to know you can do it.  It was a lot of work, though, so I’m not sure that’s how we’ll always get our soap around here.

Update:

I had an allergic reaction to the soap and don’t use it any more.

Straining the puree

Finished product