While Christy Muecke spent the evening making a special batch of artisan face cream, her husband was out back slaughtering two pigs raised by the family. The couple are intent on retaining skills that were essential in past generations, but are now largely forgotten.

They are also intent on including their three children in hopes of passing on natural life skills to their generation — which is used to simply heading down to the drug store or grocery for the things they need. But most mass produced products include less than natural ingredients, she said.

“If you can’t pronounce the ingredients in the product, it probably isn’t good for you,” she said while warming up a Mason jar of pure golden beef kidney tallow.

Muecke (aka the Chick with the Chainsaw) views the world through the eyes of an artist mixed with the frugal nature of her Dutch heritage. As the family’s schedule became hectic she had to slow down on the large-scale sculptures for which she is known. Instead, she has now turned her talents into producing smaller projects using parts of livestock often wasted, like beef kidneys.

The process of rendering the fat, which is high in vitamins A, D, E, K and B1, involves obtaining grass-fed kidneys, and slowly melting the fat on low heat to separate liquids from solids. Muecke then strains the liquid tallow for impurities, and cools it for storage or further use like in cooking and whipped tallow lotions.

It takes time, but it’s something she can do at home instead of spending days working on sculptures away from her family. She began by making handmade soap, often selling out of her luxurious bars at local farmers markets.

Then one day she read the list of ingredients on her face cream. It included; petrolatum, a by-product of refining crude oil; methylparaben (MP), a controversial synthetic ingredient that when exposed to sunlight causes skin cells to suffer more harm than non-MP treated skin cells; and Imidazolidinyl Urea, an antimicrobial preservative that acts as a formaldehyde releaser in cosmetics and personal care products — just to name a few.

Muecke decided she wanted a natural alternative and began producing her Terrific Tallow face cream. Besides her main sales at the Hillside farmers market, she had special orders from clients, who loved how the cream worked, but wanted variants — like an odor-free solution for eczema or adding essential oils like frankincense and myrrh.

“They were two gifts from the Magi. I thought that was kind of neat,” the Powell Christian School teacher said. “I always test the product on myself before I give it to anybody else.”

Her newest creation is called Magi’s Miracle Face Cream. She is finding it hard to keep up with the demand for the product. Her clients clamor for more and rave about the quality.

“I’ve always [used] Oil of Olay, but [Terrific Tallow] is wonderful and I’m gonna be your #1 supporter,” said local resident Nicole Timmons in a message to Muecke.

Sold under the label Fancies From the Farm, the products now sell faster than she can produce them. Each batch, which takes more than an hour — not including the time to render the kidneys — only makes four small jars of the cream.

Making the products satiated her desire to work with natural materials. She has spent decades working with wood for her sculptures, but in the family’s squeeze for time she has now turned her artistic eye toward a time when nothing was wasted.

“I can do this around the kids’ schedule,” she said. “I can’t work with the chainsaw much anymore because I need to be with our kids.”