Each spring, Hutterite colonies cook their annual supply of laundry soap. Cooking soap is a conservative way of cleaning up all the old lard and crackling (the residue that’s left after rendering lard from fat) that has accumulated over the year.

To start the event, the soap cooked the previous year is ground into powder by a couple of the guys, using a homemade soap grinder. Made from scratch by the men, the apparatus consists of used parts from an old feed grinder.

Two older women are in charge of the soap-making, but each year two different women (and their husbands or brothers) take turns helping.

The soap is cooked in large four-by-eight-by-three-foot vats. The cooking is done outside so that the cool breezes can keep the soap from boiling over and later help it thicken faster in the molds.

A single recipe consists of four hundred pounds of lard and crackling, one hundred pounds of lye, seventy-five gallons of water and eight cups of salt. It normally takes two days to cook seven batches. When it’s done, it averages out to about two tons of soap.

The batch takes up to three and a half hours to cook. Then it’s set aside to settle for a half hour. As it settles, the soap rises to the top. The lye, which remains at the bottom, is later drained.

Next, the soap is poured into forty-five-inch-by-eight-foot molds. It’s allowed to dry and harden for a few hours, before being cut up into small bricks and put into empty onion sacks. The guys hang the sacks in an old Quonset hut where it can stay dry and get plenty of fresh air. The soap is stored there for a whole year to dry and harden until it’s time again to make soap. Then it’s ground up and ready for use.

The soap is mainly used as laundry detergent. It’s very strong and cleans quite well, time and again.

The whole soap-cooking process is one of the biggest, messiest jobs you can imagine. But cleaning up is the worst part. It’s a tough job cleaning off the dried soap on the cement floor.

Before we begin, the guys tape wide strips of black tarp on the floor in the cooking area. But with all the walking back and forth, things still get messy.

The job can also be dangerous. The cooks wear heavy protective clothes to avoid direct contact with the lye. Anyone who gets splashed must rinse thoroughly with water.

Soap-cooking has been part of my culture for hundreds of years. The tradition was brought here from Russia, where its name originated — Russian Soap. And until there becomes a better way of cleaning up the old crackling and lard without throwing it away, it’s a tradition that will remain.