Portland Homestead Supply Co., located in Sellwood, opened June 14. Bridge hopes it will serve as a one-stop shop for Portlanders wishing to get back to the basics. The store carries supplies for canning and pickling food and for making soap, candles and laundry-soap. It also carries natural cleaning supplies, garden tools, bulk animal feed, and soil nutrients such as jersey greensand and blood meal.

The store also hosts a range of classes on canning, tool sharpening, butchering, cheese making, and “bath bombs,” orbs of bath salts that immediately start fizzing and disintegrating when they hit the water (they happen to be particularly popular with kids, Bridge reports).

Bridge, who co-owns the business with her husband Doug, estimates that about 100 people visit the shop each day. “We’ve had a wonderful response,” Kristl Bridge says. “More come through the door than we anticipated.”