We don’t do seasonal ranges in the usual sense — no pumpkin spice in August because a marketing calendar says so. But the year does shape what’s on the racks, partly because some materials are only available at certain times and partly because a six-week cure means everything has to be poured two months before anyone wants it.
Here’s roughly how a year goes.
January — February
The quiet months, and the only stretch where we’re not behind.
This is when the heavy things get made: hand salve, foot balm, the lotion bar. Winter is when people’s hands actually split, and it’s also when tallow renders best in a cold workshop.
We reformulate in January. Anything that didn’t quite work last year gets pulled apart now, while there’s time to make three test batches and be wrong twice.
Selling: Woodsman’s Hand Salve, No. 00 Unscented, Wild Mint & Charcoal.
March — April
Sap season, and the smell of the whole region changes. Everything is wet — melting snow, mud, cold running water, that particular metallic edge that only exists for about three weeks.
We pour the mint bars now, and the shave bars, because that’s what people buy when it stops being dark at 4pm.
Late April is when the balsam fir order arrives from Quebec. New-crop needle oil is noticeably brighter than year-old stock, and the first Balsam Fir & Birch Tar batches of the year are the best ones.
Pouring: Wild Mint & Charcoal, Shave Bar, Balsam Fir & Birch Tar.
May — June
Spruce tips. This is the tightest window in the year — maybe ten days when the new growth is out and still soft and bright green. Past that they toughen and the character goes.
Spruce Tip Lotion gets made now and only now. When it’s gone, it’s gone until next May, and every year someone emails in October to ask whether we can make more. We can’t; the tips aren’t there.
Market season starts. Portage starts moving the moment the lakes are open.
Pouring: Spruce Tip Lotion, Black Spruce & Sea Salt, Portage.
July — August
Sweetgrass is braided in late summer, and it needs to dry before it smells like anything. Fresh sweetgrass is green and unremarkable; three weeks later it’s vanilla and hay. That drying is why Sweetgrass & Cedar is an autumn bar made from a summer harvest.
Cloudberry ripens for about three weeks in the bog. We buy seed oil rather than picking, because picking cloudberries is somebody’s entire August and it isn’t ours.
Hot workshop, so no candles — coconut-soy doesn’t set properly above about 24°C and you get frosting and wet spots. Candle pouring stops until it cools.
Pouring: Sweetgrass & Cedar, Cloudberry & Cream, Juniper & Bergamot.
September — October
The hard part of the year.
Everything that sells in December has to be poured now. Six-week cure means an October 15th pour is a December 1st bar, and a November pour is a January bar — no matter how many people want it in December.
So September and October are Woodstove, Fire Season, First Frost, Cedar Smoke, Tamarack & Amber, and gift sets, in volume, while the racks fill from the floor up.
Tamarack is the seasonal one that actually matches its season — the larch goes gold in October, which is exactly when the bar is at its best.
Wholesale orders close in the first week of October. After that we’re allocating.
Pouring: everything. All of it.
November — December
Nothing new gets poured. There’s no point; it wouldn’t cure in time.
November and December are banding, boxing, tissue, twine and driving to the post office. The racks empty from the top down and by about the 12th of December we start running out of things.
Cedar Smoke goes first, every year. Then the Bunkhouse Box. Then Woodstove.
Selling: whatever’s left, which is never the thing you wanted.
Why we don’t just make more
The honest constraint is that a batch is 20 lb, a pour is a morning, and a cure is six weeks. We can add pours. We can’t add weeks.
Every year we pour more in October than the year before, and every year we still run out of something. That’s not scarcity marketing — it’s a rack full of soap that isn’t ready, in a room at 18°C, in the second week of December.
If you want a specific bar for a gift, buy it in November.