Mad Scientist Goods didn’t begin with a business plan. It began with a baby boy whose skin was a mess.
Our boy, Alpha Cub, had terribly sensitive, broken skin when he was tiny. Finding things we could actually use to clean and soothe him was difficult, and soap in particular was a real problem. Finally, during a trip home to New Zealand, we found one he could tolerate.
We weren’t there for soap.
My husband, Ben, the Mad Scientist behind Mad Scientist Goods, had taken us all to be with his mum one last time. Such precious little time with Ben’s mother, my mother-in-law, who was dying of cancer.
It was one of those periods of life where the enormous and the ordinary exist side by side. There was grief, family, and everything that comes with knowing your time with someone you love is running short.
And somewhere in the midst of all of that, at a little New Zealand farmers’ market, we bought a bar of handmade soap.
It was the first soap we had found that Alpha Cub’s damaged, sensitive skin could tolerate. That seemingly small discovery would eventually become the beginning of Mad Scientist Goods. Because that little discovery lodged itself firmly in my brain.
Why this soap? What was different about it? Why could our boy tolerate this when so many other things irritated his skin? Could we make something similar ourselves?
And if you’ve spent any time around Mad Scientist Goods, you probably already know that, “I wonder if we could make that?” is a rather dangerous question in our household. So we started experimenting. That first quest to make a soap suitable for our little boy eventually became AC’s Shampoo Bar, named for the Alpha Cub who started the whole thing.
We still didn’t have grand plans for a business. We were simply making something useful. Then a family member here in Texas asked whether we could make a magnesium cream.
Well.
That sounded interesting. And “interesting” is another dangerous word around here.
So we started researching.
Ingredients. Formulation. Magnesium chloride. Emulsions. Preservatives. How much of something we could reasonably incorporate into a finished product before it would crash out. How the different ingredients behaved together. How to make something that wasn’t merely a homemade concoction, but a properly thought-through product we would be happy to use ourselves (and we do!)
Eventually, we had a magnesium cream. Then someone needed something else. And then something else sounded useful.
Every week or so, it seemed, another product appeared.
Soap led to shampoo. Herbal preparations crept in. Creams joined the collection. There were experiments on the workbench, recipes being adjusted, ingredients being researched and plenty of occasions when Ben contributed either genuine scientific insight or a terrible dad joke.
Often both at the same time.
Eventually we looked around and realized we had accidentally created something resembling a business.
So we took Mad Scientist Goods to the Clarksville Farmers Market and things moved rather quickly after that.
Our range grew. Customers came back again and again. People asked us to make things. One product suggested another. One question led to another experiment.
Before long, we decided to try the Paris Farmers & Artisan Market as well. Which is where we are predominantly now.
At the same time, we were building our website and turning it into a proper catalog of everything we were making. The little collection that had begun with one bar of soap for one little boy was becoming something much bigger than we had originally imagined.
But the way we made things didn’t change. We still made them all ourselves. They are still our own recipes. And somewhere in all of that, something else was happening to me.
I was returning to knowledge that had been part of my life when I was young. Plants, herbs, Latin names, old preparations and methods distant ancestors used. A love of historical writings. The sort of practical knowledge that once passed quite naturally between generations and households was suddenly as important as remembering to water the goats.
But I was coming back to it as an adult with one particularly troublesome characteristic: I really like to research.
I don’t just want to know that an herb was traditionally used for something. I want to know why.
What family does the plant belong to? What parts are poisonous and which are useful? What constituents have been identified in it? Which of those are soluble in oil, water or alcohol? How was it traditionally prepared? Do old herbals agree with one another? What do modern references and pharmacopoeias say? What has actually been studied? Does modern research support the traditional preparation, or perhaps suggest why someone hundreds of years ago, without knowing the chemistry, had nevertheless worked out a surprisingly clever way of using the plant?
This is how I end up with a dozen or more old herbal books beside modern references, research papers open on our work computer, jars of infused oils on the workbench and handwritten pages covered in botanical drawings and notes.
One question becomes five. Five become twenty.
And eventually somebody discovers me several hours later surrounded by books, papers and so many open browser tabs that the computer inevitably crashes, announcing that I have had an idea.
This is not always reassuring news for the rest of the household.
The knowledge of my youth didn’t disappear. It met the researcher I became. And that meeting has shaped Mad Scientist Goods enormously.
Together Ben and I research, formulate, make, test, improve and occasionally stand over our work wondering why on earth a perfectly sensible experiment has just done that…
There isn’t a factory somewhere making our products with our label slapped on afterward. (Though we do hope to build one someday…)
There is just us.
And approximately seven thousand things I would like to research next.
Plus dad jokes. So many dad jokes.
The stories have become part of Mad Scientist Goods too, because our products didn’t spring fully formed from a marketing meeting. They have stories attached to them.
Interesting moments began as Ben would say something funny and I respond with a clever comeback.
Some others still began because I found something fascinating and absolutely had to investigate it. And some probably began because Ben said something that really ought not to have been interpreted as a challenge.
Which brings me to my title as “The Mad Herbalist”.
I’m not quite sure I’m her yet.
The name started as a bit of fun response to his “Mad Scientist”, he’s always been that guy to me. You know the type. Not a basement dweller, personable, but often with a head full of curly hair brown that Einstein must have had when he was young… before the grey we all remember… but I’ve grown rather fond of how The Mad Herbalist represents me.
Because the more I study herbalism, the more aware I become of how vast the world God created is. All the knowledge that’s here just waiting for us to respond to it. The study of Botany. Chemistry. Cultivation. Harvesting. Formulation. History. Traditional knowledge. Modern research. All of this comes nicely alongside the artistry and the love of drawing and painting I thought I would be doing with my life.
Any one of these things could consume a lifetime. There will always be another plant to learn. Another paper to read or an old lonely book waiting for me to pick it up. Anything could be another page to add to my journal or an experiment to try.
So I don’t really want to arrive at some imaginary point where I can declare myself finished. That’s God’s doing anyway…
The Mad Herbalist is partly who I am and partly who I’m working toward becoming.
Someone who can take the knowledge she was given when she was young, treasure it, research it, question it, add to it and eventually pass more knowledge onward than she started with. Talents that grow as God wills them to grow.
Not abandoning old knowledge simply because it is old. Not accepting it unquestioningly simply because it is old, either.
Respecting the generations of observation behind it while remaining curious enough to ask why.
And perhaps that’s the thread running through Mad Scientist Goods from the very beginning. We didn’t start because we wanted to manufacture products. We started because our baby needed something. We found something that helped him and it made us ask:
“Could we learn how to make it?”
All these products, experiments, markets, research papers, herbs, jars, stories and terrible jokes later…
I’m still asking essentially the same question.
And I hope I never stop.
~TheMadHerbalist