How to extract juice and soap recipe found on eHow.com -- Extracting jewelweed sap -- Difficulty: Moderately Easy Instructions Things You'll Need Large pot Water Blender or juicer Strainer/cheesecloth Crushing 1 Pick a handful of leaves and stems off the jewelweed plant. 2 Crush the leaves between your fingers until a small amount of juice results. 3 Spread the juice over your skin and rub in. Repeat. Boiling 1 Place water in a large pot -- roughly one part jewelweed and five or more parts water is needed. Base the potency of your product on the severity of the rash. 2 Place jewelweed leaves, flowers and stems in the pot and bring to a boil. 3 Let it boil/simmer for 15-30 minutes. 4 Strain the liquid into a container using a mesh filter or cheesecloth. Place in a refrigerator or freezer if not used immediately. Blending 1 Cut the jewelweed at its base and remove the entire plant from its roots in the ground. 2 Liquefy the jewelweed using a blender, food processor or juicer. 3 Strain it through a mesh filter or cheesecloth and apply to your skin or refrigerate immediately. Recipe for jewelweed soap -- Difficulty: Easy Instructions Things You'll Need Blooming jewelweed plants Glycerin soap base Orange soap coloring Orange essential oil Soap mold Cooking oil spray 1 Gather flowers, leaves and stems from blooming jewelweed plants. Coarsely chop 1 cup of the plant material and add to 1 cup of water in a small saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil, reduce the heat and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes or until the water turns dark. 2 Strain the infusion through a coffee filter into a heat-proof jar or bowl. Reserve the liquid and add the plant material to your compost heap. 3 Melt 2 cups glycerin soap base in a double boiler. Remove the pan from the heat, and add � cup jewelweed infusion. Stir well to blend thoroughly. Allow the mixture to cool for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. 4 Add two drops of orange soap coloring and seven drops of orange essential oil. Stir very well. 5 Coat your soap mold with a very light layer of cooking oil spray. Pour the liquid into the mold and cool it at room temperature. Remove your jewelweed soap from the mold and enjoy it. Here is a link that might be useful: jewelweed info

George, my understanding of a dynamic accumulator is a plant with deep roots that mines minerals from the soil and stores them in it's leaves. By cutting leaves from the plant and using as mulch you have brought micro-nutrients from deep in the ground and made them available to another plant, such as a fruit tree. If you grow comfrey near the tree, you can chop off part of the comfrey leaves and drop them around the tree to improve the growth of the tree. Sort of like fertilizing and mulching at once without having to haul in anything to do it with. It has long been known that legumes set nitrogen for other plants, and work with the bacteria in the soil, but now there is a good deal of research and information being shared about how trees interact with each other through a fungi net underground. There are several videos available on line and I have linked one below. I have become very interested in the things that Mother Earth seems to do to try to heal herself. For instance, if you have a compacted lawn, dandelions show up. They have roots that go deep and start to open up the soil. I have watched videos lately that show areas in the middle east that have had plants come back that they thought were extinct, and the only action has been to fence off the area from the grazing animals. I seem to have changed the way I look at many things, and am learning that there are a lot more things we can do to help our earth function better. When you have 30 minutes to spare, watch this documentary by John D Liu. I'll bet if you watch it once, you will watch it more than once. It is thought provoking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iJKiFSQLn4 .............Mother needs a little more help from us. Here is a link that might be useful: Suzanne Simard

O.K., here I go again. I got more nuts thanks to Matt from buy soapnuts@yahoo.com. I must say these nuts looked nice, lighter color, somewhat sticky and I was excited again and so I did one load of laundry,which was clean after. The rest of the nuts I used to make the liquid. I followed instructions and when it was done I ended up w/ this brown liquid. It really didn't feel soapy much at all and it is not sudsing at all either. My question is. Should I feel soapiness when I put it on my hand? Should the liquid be brown? And if I don't feel the soapiness, how do I know that tiny amount of the liquid will really clean our laundry? I really like the idea of something natural but this just doesn't look right to me. Please help me w/ this dilema.

Carolyn, There was a thread here a while back I posted with labeling info. I'm sure some one will post a link. (I would, but no clue how....) I can tell you that I contacted the handmade soapmakers guild about insurance for my business. THe answer they sent me was that yes they deal with people who offer insurance, but to be covered you HAVE to label according to FDA regulations. If making cold process soap you do not HAVE to label soap, because SOAP is not techinically covered by the FDA, or anyone else. HOWEVER, M&P is NOT considered SOAP by the FDA, & must have ALL ingredients listed on an ingredient label, in the order they are in the product. SOAP, by definition is the combining of oils/fats with lye to cause the chemical reaction called saponification to occur. In essense you are combining several "natural" ingredients, which combined together cause another "product" to be created-SOAP. M&P soap is a a bunch of chemically made items added together to create another chemical (ok, chemical may NOT be the right word), which is why you have to label ingredients on M&P soap. Its essentially no different than buying a bottle of lotion from the store....you read the list of ingredients & they add up to make lotion. You add up a bunch of ingredients & end up with M&P soap base. The company you get your base from should have a list of ingredients available, you can just copy it, add your own additives-clays, micas, colors, fragrances etc & print your own labels. Hazel