Naturally soothing skincare issues

MARSHFIELD, Wis. — After a lifetime of dealing with eczema issues, Heather Heiman was determined to find a non-pharmaceutical option for her daughter, Madelyn, who deals with the same issues. Seeking a natural remedy, she decided to try her hand at making tallow-based lotions.

“Our eczema gets terrible in the winter,” Heather Heiman said. “Last fall my sisters and I were discussing how tallow was becoming a big deal in natural skin care. At first I was skeptical, but I decided I was already rendering tallow for cooking, what was a couple of more renders to try it for skincare?”

Heather and her husband, Josh, are both multi-generation dairy farmers. Heather works on her family’s dairy farm, D&B Sternweis Farms Inc., where they milk 400 cows. Josh works at two of his family’s dairy businesses: Weber’s Farm Store and Heiman Holsteins LLC, where they milk 490 cows. The Heimans have four children — Harper, Madelyn, Jaxson and Payton.

The tallow Heather works with is a byproduct of steers raised for meat that is retailed through Weber’s Farm Store.

“We do two steers a month to retail through the store,” Josh said. “When Heather asked me if she could have the tallow from butchering, I thought she was a little nuts, but I said, ‘Sure, it’s there, why not.’”

Because her initial motivation was to create products that benefited her and her daughter’s sensitive skin issues, the quality of the ingredients was one of her primary concerns, Heather said. She wanted to keep her final product as close to nature as she could, while making it appealing to the senses.

“We did a lot of research on our oils,” Heather said. “For our baby cream, we use olive oil because it doesn’t absorb into the skin as easily — and that’s what you want, to create a barrier for the skin. But for everything else we use jojoba oil because it does a really good job of absorbing into the skin, and it’s almost exactly the same as the makeup of your skin.”

After her initial efforts, Heather said she was intrigued enough to concentrate those efforts.

“I tried it on me and it worked really well; then I made some unscented stuff to use on Maddy and it worked for her,” Heather said. “Then I started looking for more recipes and trying some different things. It was definitely a lot of trial and error. I spent about six months working on it before I had it down to exactly what I wanted.”

Josh said he originally questioned his wife’s faith in the lotions she was developing, but grudgingly agreed to try the lotion to solve his own winter skin issues.

“I thought it was just foo-foo dust,” Josh said. “Heather kept after me to use it on my hands — they get really dry and the skin cracks, every winter. I thought if it made her happy, I’d try it. I was shocked when, within a week, the cracks were healing up, and I was thinking maybe there’s some merit to it.”

With Josh on board, Heather soldiered on through the learning process, relying heavily on family and friends as sounding boards.

“I had lots of guinea pigs; everyone was really good about trying the lotion and giving me honest feedback,” Heather said. “After a while Josh, my sisters and sister-in-law, and then even our vet started encouraging me to sell it, saying it was a really good product.”

Bolstered by her friends and family, Heather decided to dip her toes into cottage industry marketing, and H & Company Whipped Tallow was born with the launch of her website in May.

As the volume of her sales has increased, Heather is streamlining her production process to fit into her family’s busy life. Depending on the time she has available, she will either do a smaller batch in a crockpot or render a large batch in a commerical-sized stock pot she purchased for the project.

“I cook it low and slow,” Heather said. “As long as you keep the temperature low, there is no way to over-render the tallow, but if you have the heat too high, you can burn it.”

The process of making her products begins with rendering the tallow at least four times.

“The first render we do a wet render,” Heather said. “You put water and salt in with it and it just helps pull out more of the grizzle and the beefy smell — it kind of flushes it out.”

After that, the tallow is strained and then dry-rendered and scraped at least three more times, to continually draw out any excess water and other impurities.

“You don’t want any water in your tallow,” Heather said. “It needs to be hard and have a nice snap to it when you put a knife in it. You can see it pulling away from the sides; it shrinks as the moisture leaves. If you have no water in the tallow, it will be shelf-stable for up to a year. If there is water remaining, it won’t take long to go bad.”

Heather renders tallow in batches ranging from 70-90 pounds. The volume loss throughout the rendering process is minimal, with typically around a 6% reduction.

“I keep it refrigerated until it’s fully rendered; otherwise, bacteria will grow,” Heather said. “Once the water is out, you can store it on the shelf. If I ever have a question about the moisture content, I always render it again. I’d rather be a little over-cautious than have a batch go bad.”

In addition to baby cream and lotions in several scents, Heather also makes sunscreen, lip balms and sugar scrubs. Besides retailing her products on her website, the products are stocked at Weber’s Farm Store and Nasonville Dairy; she also wholesales to several stores in Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri.

With the increase in orders Heather has experienced since launching her products, she tries to keep a stock of tallow ready for use. From the first render to a completed product, the process takes a week, Heather said.

The endeavor has become a family enterprise with her children enjoying helping with whatever jobs they can.

“They will put the labels on the containers,” Heather said. “They’re so proud of what they do when they help. They’re learning a lot about the value of a dollar, the value of work. We talk about why we’re doing it and they like that.”

Heather’s goal has been to make her products affordable.

“I’m a frugal person by nature,” Heather said. “When I purchase something, I want it to be a great value for my dollar. That is how I want people to see our products. There are so many people who could benefit from high-quality skincare, I want to keep my prices so anyone can afford them.”