Sequim Farmers Market
Dates: July 16, July 23
Hours: Saturdays 9 a.m.-3 p.m. (through October)
Location: Downtown Sequim at Sequim Avenue, Washington Street
Contacts: www.sequimmarket.com; manager@sequimmarket.com; 460-2668
What’s new at the market is The Soap Box and that doesn’t mean you get to come down and profess your great intelligence, but if you did and need be, we could wash your mouth out with soap because The Soap Box has it!
Leah Thompson is the brains behind the suds at The Soap Box. She started making soap last year and she has taken on the task with a spirited passion.
She has a lifelong love of scents and burned countless sticks of incense as a kid which later turned into a magnetism toward homemade bath products.
“We would travel to farmers markets and I would just hang around the bath product booths and smell everything,” Leah says.
Her husband Andy is an accomplice to the undertaking and when she was pregnant with Jack, now 1 year old, he set things rolling when he asked her what hobby she might like to take up. Readily soap making came to mind so Andy bought her a book and set it into motion.
All through her pregnancy Leah did abundant research and trialed batches, taking what she liked from each trial. She has a background in baking — she baked at a popular bakery in Utah for years — and says, “Soap-making is pretty similar to baking, it’s chemistry.”
She started very small with bath bombs and shave soap at a market in St. George, Utah, and it went over great.
Andy is present most days at the Sequim Farmers Market, helping wrangle Jack and selling soap. He also built the molds she uses for making her bar soaps and lends a hand working with the recipe calculations.
“Andy endorses all of my soap developments,” Leah says.
Perhaps the most avant-garde item in her booth is the shave soap. Leah claims it to be “her baby” for which she is “beyond proud” and she has spent countless hours perfecting and celebrating its creamy lather. She tells me she played around with calculators extensively to create the lather she envisioned and the first time she “whipped one up” she almost cried.
Leah sells a kit with shave soap and a brush. From here she is beginning to look into beard care, which she is learning is an art in itself that takes accoutrements.
“I am looking for what is unique and people have been asking me about beard products,” she says.
Leah’s enthusiasm is apparent as she always is looking for new strategies, methods and ways to improve her soap offerings. Quality also is a driving force — she says the quality of the oils plays a great role in the creaminess and the lather of a soap. At the market their most popular item is the bath bomb. They fizz and effuse while you bathe.
Leah also sells bath salts and bar soaps. She regularly rotates soaps through a sale basket.
When I ask what she enjoys about the Sequim Farmers Market, she says, “I absolutely love this market, the vendors, the locals and the tourists.”
We are grateful to have this wonderful new vendor at our market. Come meet Leah, Andy and Jack Thompson at the Saturday market and pick up some shave soap for yourself or someone you love.
Sequimarimba will be playing live from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. on July 9! This will be their one market performance of the year, so come and enjoy the resplendent sounds of Africa.
