Inside Anointment: Making Baby Balm

Anointment has been making Baby Balm for 15 years. Many things have changed since then: in 2003 ago I carried a Palm Pilot, listened to 50 cent’s “In Da Club” on repeat, and rented “Lost in Translation” at the local Blockbuster for Friday night entertainment. One thing that hasn’t changed is our commitment to pure, simple, natural recipes that work! In that time, Anointment has moved provinces from Nova Scotia to New Brunswick, changed our business model from Farmers’ Market stand to serving the wholesale market, and now has coast to coast Canadian distribution! Our workspace has evolved, our team has grown, and our batch volumes have doubled, but we still do things very much by hand.

We use minimal processing to maintain the quality of the natural ingredient benefits.  Learn how Anointment Baby Balm is made.

We begin with the best ingredients. We source certified organic herbs from a trusted supplier in Ontario. We now purchase certified organic extra virgin olive oil by the DRUM (produced in Tunisia, it is beautiful oil), and use Canadian beeswax from a lovely farmer named Tom in Manitoba. Each ingredient is carefully weighed and all of the product details are recorded for our batch records.

When the herbs are weighed, they are added to a heated infusion pot (not shown) along with the measured extra virgin olive oil and heated over low heat for several hours. This allows the natural (oil soluble) soothing properties of the herbs to be extracted into the oil.

After the heating period, the oil and herbs sit for several more hours (sometimes days) at room temperature to continue steeping. The oil is then double-strained to remove all of the dried herb material.

Fragrant Canadian beeswax is weighed and added to the oil. Beeswax is the thickener that creates an ointment (see what we did there with our name?) texture.

When the beeswax has melted, the Baby Balm ointment is ready to be bottled.

Poured hot, each bottle of Baby Balm is poured by hand and filled by weight.

Each bottle is labeled using a semi-automatic labeling machine. It operates with a foot pedal like a sewing machine. This photo shows Lavender Body Wash & Bubbles, but we use the same labeling machine for Baby Balm. We had to send the machine for customization because of the lips on the jars we use (notice the notches cut in the silver and black rollers).

The end result is a bottle of double-award winning jar of Baby Balm, ready to fulfill its diapering destiny.

Do you have a story to tell about Baby Balm? Let us know, we’ll add it to the website!