Birds of a Feather Farm

Location: 825 W. Washington St., Sequim

Phone: 477-4343

On the web: www.birdsofafeatherfarm.com

Hours: 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday-Saturday

Sometimes adversity brings unexpected twists and turns that lead to blessings and bliss.

That was so with Kristi Grasser, owner of the newly opened gift shop Birds of a Feather Farm in Sequim.

In her 30s, Grasser, now 48, became very ill and became convinced that her typical American diet of foods chock-full of preservatives, chemicals and dyes had something — or perhaps everything — to do with her ailment.

“I started researching (natural) nutrition and today I’m about 100 percent,” Grasser said from her organic and natural goods shop. She adopted a non-toxic lifestyle and soon realized that because skin is the body’s largest organ, chemicals contained in bath and beauty products had the capacity to do great harm.

“Having no federal regulations for beauty products just floored me — there are more regulations for dog food than for what you put on your skin,” Grasser said.

“There are chemicals in beauty products, even with organic and natural stuff. You can’t be 100 percent natural unless you make it yourself,” Grasser stressed, “so I started making soaps for my friends and family, which I sold at cost. Soon, more and more people wanted the product and the business kind of grew itself. It really took off because people loved that it was natural, local and hand-crafted.”

While working at Sunny Farms, Grasser, who is self-taught, was making soap at home and it soon was overtaking the Grassers’ lives and space. (Her husband Elmer is the third generation in his family to work for the Black Ball Ferry Line.)

She named the business Birds of a Feather Farm and secured a business license for wholesale, retail and online sales. Soon large retailers came calling for contracts to sell her branded bath and beauty products and three others have private label agreements with her. In April, the Grassers purchased and remodeled the former Jeremiah’s BBQ, a barn red building on West Washington Street. The building was just what they needed: two bright and airy rooms for displaying all of their merchandise, a good-sized kitchen to make the soap, a separate back building to dry the bars and another area for boxing and shipping.

“All of the Birds of a Feather products are made right here and last year I launched Manny’s men’s line with tons of beard products. It’s the funniest thing because it’s so popular and a hot seller,” Grasser said.

“I’m here at 7 a.m. three or four times a week and I just make soap like Grandma did with lye and oil. Saponification creates soap. The process is to make it, mold it, cut it, stamp it, leave it on the drying rack for six weeks, wrap it and box it,” Grasser explained. “There are 22 bars in a batch and I can do five batches or 125 bars a day.”

She also noted that hand-crafted bars of soap even last longer than commercial varieties.

“I just had a huge order of 60 bars of soap for a New York customer,” Grasser said. “My focus is to keep natural bath and beauty products and other hand-crafted items like potpourri from Arkansas, fruit-scented soap from Soap Orchard in Walla Walla and goats milk soap from Kaass Hills Farm in Shelton.”

In addition to the bath and beauty products, Grasser has hand-picked rustic gifts including humorous and inspirational signs, hand-crafted canned sockeye and chinook salmon and albacore tuna, greeting cards, essential oils, aromatherapy diffusers and beeswax candles. She also has non-toxic products for babies. Online she found a battered enamel farm sink where now customers can try on different products and then wash up.

Grasser plans to offer soap-making classes in the fall but also carries the ingredients and paraphernalia for customers to make their own soaps in her apothecary section. Sign up for classes on her Facebook or web pages.

“I use hundreds of essential oils and I have four soaps made of beer and two wine soaps that are very popular — you can make soap with anything really — and I will make special orders.”

She welcomes customers to come in and learn more about the natural products at Birds of a Feather Farm.