About The Croft

You wouldn't be able to read about The Croft in Dutch if it weren't for the help and dedicated passion from a dear friend of ours. Her talent has been to more than just do a word-for-word translation, but she manages to grasp the essence of what we are doing and bring to life the meaning and feeling that goes into each product we have written about.

Having moved to Belgium - by choice - from New Zealand almost a decade ago, we have found our little piece of paradise. A small farm in the rolling countryside of the "Hageland", we started on our dream of becoming more self-reliant. Planting our own fruit and veggies, getting some chickens, sorting out the land were all full-time pastimes in the beginning. Then learning about bee-keeping, and going from 1 to 2 to 5 to 7 hives within a space of 3 years!

Now that we are getting things under control, and becoming more and more conscious about what goes into what we eat, buy, and use, we decided to start making soap. Happy circumstance found us a phenomenal mentor, who - thanks to the Internet - was only a keystroke away. She was patient, sharing, and kind with her knowledge and time. Her artistic skill and craftsmanship inspired us.

Belgium doesn't have a tradition of cottage-industry soap-making, so finding our mentor was a blessing. We'd like to take this opportunity openly to thank her. You know who you are!

After a few soap batches, we were hooked!! How amazing to know that we can transform all these lovely ingredients to gentle soap. Exotic oils and butters and scents started to be delivered to our door as we tried more and more things. How lovely to know what goes into your soap - which cares for your largest organ. Soon we became obsessed with reading labels, and learning as much as we could about these wonderfully aromatic ingredients.

And then the day came... we'd been trying our soaps on ourselves, now it was time to rope in friends and family. Our son's daycarer is allergic to many things in commercial soaps - so having her as one of our guinea pigs was truly rewarding - she loves our soap, and can use all the bars she's tested so far (a very wide range) without negative results or allergic reactions! It was so gratifying when people started requesting soap from us, and wanting more and different varieties after using up their last bar.

Lots of paperwork, research, late nights and coffee saw the recipes refined, reviewed, and we were finally ready to share our soaps with you.

So, that brings you up to speed. Here we are, just at the beginning of a whole new adventure... won't you join us?