Our Products
My intention for High Meadow Botanicals is to transport you to some of my favorite California escapes through the scent and spirit of each bar. Each bar of soap is handmade in small batches using the traditional cold process method including traditional ingredients like pasture raised, grass fed beef tallow. Combined with other plant based, skin loving oils this combination makes for a truly luxurious, long-lasting bar of soap. Each batch is left to cure for a minimum of 4 weeks to ensure a hard, long-lasting bar. Since I make everything in small batches no two will ever be the same so there will be slight variations in color or design, this adds to the unique and beautiful nature of handcrafted soap.
Our Formula
My custom recipes are filled with a gorgeous blend of traditional grass-fed beef tallow, nourishing plant butters and oils as well as pure, therapeutic grade essential oils and natural colorants such as clays, spices, and herbs. This formula gives the bars their creamy, luxurious lather, and gentle cleansing abilities while ensuring your skin is nourished and moisturized. No squeaky clean feeling like after you use a store-bought, detergent-based bar of soap that strips the natural oils from your skin. No harmful chemicals, toxins, synthetic fragrances/colorants, preservatives or palm oil. Your skin is your bodies largest organ and what you put on it is directly absorbed into your body which is why it’s so important to use safe, natural ingredients in skin care products. Making these bars is truly a labor of love and the realization of a life-long dream of creating beautiful products to share with friends and family. Thank you so much for supporting my dream!
Meet Teresa
“...And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”
- John Muir
I’m a city girl with mountain dreams. I’m a lover of trees and nature. I’m an obsessive maker. I’m also a small batch soap maker. But it was a long and winding road to get here. I love to make things. I think it’s just in my blood. My Grandma, who lived on a farm in Canada, always made her own soap from scratch using the beef tallow she rendered from her own cattle. She even used to grate it and use it as laundry soap! I started making soap for fun in 1999 and loved giving it away to friends and family! But I knew I should focus on a “serious” career so I gave up on the dream of starting my own soap company. My husband and I have always worked in bars and restaurants so 5 years ago we took a leap of faith and opened our own restaurant, which almost killed me in the process, but was and still is successful beyond my wildest imagination. But still I knew it wasn’t the right long term career for me. I was exhausted, my health wasn’t great, I developed autoimmune conditions and I knew I couldn’t keep going at the pace I had been. And then Covid hit and life as we knew it came to a stop. As stressful as Covid was financially and for our restaurant I had never felt better physically and mentally. The slowing down of the world had literally allowed me to feel like I could stop and catch my breath for the first time in years! I had time to be creative again, dabbling in macrame, weaving, and painting, things I hadn’t done in years.
As things got better with Covid and the world ramped back up to the frantic pace of before I knew I couldn’t go back to the way it had been. Something had changed and I knew with every fiber of my being that I needed to do something creative again. So I hired a manager for the restaurant and slowly stepped back. I didn’t know exactly what was next but I knew somehow I needed to make things. To bring something into the world that felt like a representation of me. Luckily my friend had a cabin in South Lake Tahoe that I was able to stay at whenever I could so I spent weeks there over the spring and summer of 2021 and slowly started to unwind, relax, and heal. Hikes in the forest alone literally brought me to tears at the beauty of nature. I knew I was on the right path. They say to think of what you liked to do as a kid for a clue as to what your authentic self is drawn to. I knew I loved being in nature, foraging for wild plants, making things from scratch. I came across an essential oil blend in a candle one day that made me feel like I was in the middle of the forest and I couldn’t stop thinking about how that scent transported me and I knew I was on the right track. Then I remembered how I had loved making soap and how it made me feel when other people loved my soap as well and it all clicked. Hiking in the high mountain meadows that summer, surrounded by butterflies as they flittered between wild flowers I knew I had found my home and my calling. I hope you enjoy my creations as much as I love creating them!
Beef Tallow: The ancient secret ingredient
Tallow is a very healthy fat. It contains a wide array of all the beneficial nutrients that our skin needs to repair itself. It is the best moisturizer to use if you want healthy skin. It's extremely compatible with the oil that our skin naturally produces. It actually shares a similar biology. That’s one of the reasons why our skin is able to use tallow so effectively.
Tallow helps to produce rich, creamy lather that is gently cleansing and wonderful for skin. Pure tallow soap is very popular for people who have various skin conditions, because it is so gentle and effective at the same time.Compared to plant based oils, tallow provides skin with very intense moisture. You will recognize this immediately when you put it on your skin. There is nothing better than tallow for soothing and hydrating dry skin. Tallow is not only great for repairing skin, but it also helps to prevent damage to skin. All of those skin friendly antioxidants and other nutrients keep skin healthy and strong. Here are some of the benefits of 100% grass fed tallow:
- Is deeply nourishing and moisturizing
- Contains Vitamins A, D, K, & E, & B12, all of which are extremely beneficial for skin
- Also helps to prevent skin’s loss of moisture
- Contains conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) with natural anti-inflammatory properties
- Has all of these nutrients that are found together only in animal products
- Contains oleic acid (omega 9) aids other components in penetrating deeply into skin
- Is antibacterial & antimicrobial
- Contains palmitic acid which helps improve the protective barrier function of skin
- Is rich in minerals
- Contains stearic acid which helps to repair damaged skin, and improves skin’s flexibility and suppleness
- Aids in skin regeneration for skin that appears healthier and more youthful
- Contains palmitoleic acid (omega 7) which is one of our skin’s basic building blocks
As you can see, it’s a pretty impressive list of nutrients that benefit us both inside and out. It’s important to note that these nutrients are far more abundant in grass fed cattle than grain fed cattle.
Caring for your soap
Like any bar of soap all natural handmade bars prefer to dry out in between uses. Please use a draining soap dish to help prolong the life of your bars. These are rather large bars– feel free to cut them in half for easier handling and to make them last longer.
Disclaimer
I hand cut and aim for 6 oz. per bar. They are approximately 3" x 2" x 1" in size. These are handmade items and while I strive to keep the sizing consistent, it's not always possible so please allow for slight variations in size, shape, and color.
Regulations set forth by the FDA prohibit bath and body companies from making health-related claims about beauty products. I am not a medical or healthcare professional and do not claim that the use of my products may have a positive effect on pre-existing physical and/or mental health conditions. The information in my listings pertains to the properties of specific ingredients used in the products.
High Meadow Botanicals is not responsible for individual reactions to any particular ingredients.
Clean for a cause
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit."
-Nelson Henderson
For every bar of soap sold, one tree is planted by the TreeSisters organization. TreeSisters is a UK registered social change and reforestation charity that places tropical forest restoration into everyone’s hands. Through individuals and businesses that give back to Nature every month, TreeSisters has so far funded the planting of over 22 million trees across 12 locations in Brazil, Borneo, Cameroon, India, Kenya, Mozambique, Madagascar, Nepal and West Papua.
The planting of trees restores ecosystems and livelihoods whilst increasing protection against the extremes of climate change in multiple regions of the tropical forest belt. This is done in ways that recreate and restore natural forest ecosystems using indigenous species, fostering local knowledge and skills, and promoting women's participation.
Here's their latest press release: TreeSisters is an invitation to everyone to do as much radical good as they can for the planet. Our global network of treesisters is transforming both lives and landscapes in extraordinary ways. TreeSisters offers unique global programs that focus on encouraging women's leadership, Nature-connection, and significant behaviour change as we make the shift from being consumers to restorers. TreeSisters is funding the restoration of environments, biodiversity and communities within more than 10 major ecosystems around the global Tropics, through a diverse portfolio of vetted, trusted reforestation projects and in the process, planting millions of trees. Join us in making ecological restoration the new norm! www.treesisters.org
To learn more or make a donation, visit TreeSisters.org, and thank you in advance for your support.
