A longtime nurse is using her skills in a new way: soap-making

May 27—HAYFIELD, Minn. — A longtime local nurse is using her skills in a new career.

"My nursing career has really prepared me for this specific business because there is a lot of math and science that goes into the soap-making process," said Michelle Hamilton, owner of Dandelion Naturals, a homemade, natural soap company based in Hayfield. "Just formulating recipes, you need to understand the science and the math behind that. That's really helped on the patient or the customer side of things. I get so many people asking me health-related things like skin-related questions. It's at every market that I go to and we get emails from customers, so I feel like I'm still able to be a nurse in that regard and help people and suggest products that work for them."

Hamilton's health journey to a more holistic and natural lifestyle began in 2011 when she saw a holistic chiropractor. From there she began to make changes to her lifestyle with her husband.

"It just kind of opened up my eyes to just there's more out there for healing and for things that we can do naturally to even prevent disease and things," Hamilton said. "It all started with just eating real whole foods and it just evolved from there. We bought an acreage. We've been out here for 10 years. We live on 10 acres. We have chickens and we have apple trees and we have a garden. I was dabbling in working with medicinal plants that grow around here. So we like nettle. We work with dandelions and comfrey and all these things. I taught myself all of that."

Hamilton wanted to make an all-natural soap company with the hopes of expanding into other products and she has. Dandelion Naturals has products in stores in 29 states across the country. She hopes to get her products into every state this year.

"Our laundry soap is probably our most popular product right now," said Hamilton. .

She offers many items such as lip balms, medicinal salves, lotion bars, and shampoo and conditioner bars. But she started with bar soaps with 50 varieties.

Hamilton likes to keep as many of her ingredients as local as possible. She has a local beekeeper near Rice Lake for honey and uses cow's milk instead of goat's milk because she has a source for it closer. Hamilton also grows some of the herbs she uses in her products on her farm.

"I also love our unscented soap," she said. "I would say probably our tallow bar is my favorite thing that we make. It just has a natural scent to it, which I absolutely love because it's just so wholesome. I don't know how to explain it. It smells like oatmeal to me."

Hamilton also wanted to make products for the whole family. She makes unscented bars in fun animal shapes that are safe and healthy for little kids.

"I just wanted something that specifically stood out that is for kids," Hamilton said. "I think so many products on the market today for kids they shouldn't be using, like it's not safe for them and this is our most gentle bar soap."

Currently, the Dandelion Naturals team consists of Hamilton and four other women who help produce soap. Her current space can produce 640 bars of soap a day but they have to cure for four to six weeks.

"The cold process method is basically the oldest form of making soap really," Hamilton said. "In my opinion, (it's) the purest way of making soap and really the most labor intensive. You're basically starting from scratch. It's like you're making a loaf of bread from scratch. You're grinding your flour, you know all the things but with soap, you're getting all of your oils measured out. You're getting your hard oils, your liquid oils, you're measuring that out and then you're mixing in your lye solution."

The team is outgrowing the farmhouse the company currently operates out of. Since most of her business is online, she hopes to move into a commercial space with more room to produce and store her products. Dandelion Naturals is also a plastic-free company, so the team has been working to figure out packaging that works best.

Dandelion Naturals will cut down on market events when that does come, but Hamilton is excited to continue going to new and regular locations throughout the summer. One place you will be able to catch her is at Thursdays Downtown.

She is grateful for the support she has received from her husband, who helps out on busy weekends, and her 5-year-old daughter who comes out to spend time with her at events.

"I think that we are truly a small business and we have hands on the whole process," Hamilton said. "Everything that we make is from us. We don't source things and just flop our label on it. It is truly all-natural and we really care about the products that we make. It's safe for the whole family to use."