We had friends visit on and off through the week, but it was a productive time. Reynaldo, our first WWOOFer of the season arrived (“World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms” is a program that connects farms with folks who’d like to work on farms in exchange for the experience, a place to stay, and food, basically – this is how we travel south in the winters when the farm inhospitable to non-Yeti life).
We’d actually met Reynaldo on our travels last winter, in Mississippi, at Yokna Bottoms Farm – and he came to us straight from Habitable Spaces, the Texas farm we overwintered at. It was great to reconnect, and was wonderful having another set of hands helping to keep things growing.
We weeded rows, freeing tiny new plants from the tyranny of crowding weeds and their sun and moisture-stealing ways. The last of the eggplants and peppers moved out of the greenhouse and into the field,. and the weather mostly cooperated, giving us cloudy, gently grey days while the plants recovered from their shock.
Our friend Eugene spent a few days, and was the first person to sleep in the Rust Shack. He performed carburetor wizardry; reviving a lawn mower and a pump that we will be using to irrigate the crops with compost tea (just what it sounds like).
Today’s harvest was fully 20 degrees cooler than last week’s – it was much more pleasant working weather, and easier to keep things fresh and cool after picking. However, the few days of intense heat had an impact on the crops – the cool weather crops took it as a sign that summer was upon them, and reacted accordingly. The Napa cabbage decided to skip forming heads entirely, and go straight to flowering. Bok Choi, mustard greens, and most of the arugula bolted as well.
We keep finding new vole tunnels, but not much sign of damage being inflicted above ground. We find cut worms incidentally while digging, but I can’t say I’ve noticed their damages much. We frapeed some crop eating beetles, to make organic species-specific bug repellent spray – which seemed to actually work!
The harmless June bugs have passed their peak blundering buzzing period, and now their fat grubs are showing up in the compost piles. Mosquitoes, delayed by the dry early spring, finally busted out after the soakings of early June … but the dragonflies and other devourers were waiting for them, and the surge faded after a couple of days.
there’s a bear in this pic, but you can’t tell.
A black bear has been ambling among us all week, trying to stay out of sight but not always succeeding. The hens are happy and exploring further and further from their coop. The farmers are happy, too, and are settling into the groove.
Eugene brought us a bag of clothes he found – and the clothes in there fit us both perfectly! I did some work in my new suit …
this is a Whip Poor WIll. We didn’t take the picture – they are nocturnal and we hear them throughout the nights – but never see them.This giant spider seemed weirdly still while I worked nearby, until I wondered why and went to see if it was alive – turns out she was standing guard over her eggs, which she darted to, picked up, and ran off with when disturbed
in the Box this week:
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Napa Cabbage – as mentioned, the Napa opted to go straight to flower and skip all the head-forming business entirely – so it’s cabbage leaves! Stir-fry, sauerkraut, kimchi, sliced thinly, yum. *
Spring Salad Mix – Pea tips, sunflower greens, Argula, Red Ruby lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, wild spinach, regular spinach, tat soi, a little bit of sheep sorrel, mizuna, & mustard greens. *
Radishes – Thanks to the early spring cutworms, our crop of radishes and turnips was decimated, so these little globes are now fine and precious as pearls. *
Salad Turnips – Smooth and mild, great on salads, delicious raw or cooked. *
Turnip & Radish Greens – Interchangeable and also, ridiculously nutritious.Not good at all if eaten raw, but very good in soup, sautees, etc – check out some recipe ideas online.
Melissa made radish green pesto with last week’s share
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Broccoli (large shares only) – a few rogue early broccoli plants formed heads early – not enough to give to everyone, but enough to share a bit.
It was a beautiful summer day for our first harvest of the year; over 90 and sunny, with a slight breeze and little puffy white clouds. We got out early to get the leafy greens harvested, before the radiance could rob them of their juicy vitality.
Or us of ours, for that matter.
It was a long cool spring, but now things are really heating up – lows are in the 50s, soil temps are around 70, we’ve stopped checking the weather obsessively for forecasted freezes, the windows stay open at night, and taking a cool shower can sound appealing.
We like it, and so do the plants.
Things really turned around recently, or felt like they did at least.
Even just a week ago, we were feeling pretty bleak about the field. It seemed that everything was being devoured and decimated. Everything we’d tried to do to improve the situation somehow made things worse. We went careening through various stages of grief; denial, anger, acceptance, determination, and cannibalism. Storm clouds loomed and we battened the hatches. But then the darkness broke and the sunshine busted out.
As it does.
The sad brassicas and lettuces revived. Voles, while still active, did their damage within acceptable parameters. The cut worms increasingly (if not entirely) were squished by us, eaten by birds, or leveled up and became immobile chrysalis types that don’t make nightly surface raids. The kohlrabi survived emergency untransplantation and retransplantation. The quack grass agreed to a draw for the season. (We’re not sure if we trust it, but it’s good for now.) Legions of plants graduated out from the greenhouse – tomatilloes, ground cherries, tomatoes, peppers – and we even planted a bunch of wildflowers and clover. WWOOFer and HelpX requests (to come stay on the farm and help out with the work) came rolling in, after a long period of silence. It rained, a lot, but with good hot sunshine between deluges.
Things feel good.
The woods around us are unfolding in a kaleidoscope of life. The field looks lively and bursting with wonderful potential – quite welcome really. Although I’d gotten well along toward accepting that my fate was to toil in a desolate wasteland (“why do you think they call it ‘The Barrens’?”), and even finding humor and beauty and meaning in it – I’d rather not, really. I love our living field and growing plants, and Spring has sprung,
And it’s already time to start the fall broccoli crop!? Holy crap.
Box #1: Early Risers
Please return your empty boxes every week! We need them! We want them! We don’t want to buy more! Thanks. :)
Radishes – About 75% of the radishes we’ve tried planting (in multiple waves) have fallen to the forces of the cutworms and voles. And then the survivors were recently subjected to sudden intense rainfalls (one day we got 1.5″ drenching, a short respite, and then another 1/2″ fell in the course of one soaking half hour) – like tomatoes, radishes absorb water uncontrollably and split when they expand too quickly. But they’re still good!
Radish Greens – Great in a pesto. Really; make some pesto with these things; recipes abound on the googlebot. Or if you’re the oppositional type, cook em and do something else – chop em up with the onion whites and sautee them together, add that to scrambled eggs or into an omelette. They hold sauces well, so they’re good to sautee with other vegetables.
Sunflower Greens – I like these best fresh, but some folks also like ’em cooked. Use in salads, sandwiches, stir fries, wraps – or munch them alone as a snack.
Early Riser Salad Mix: A tasty mix of the first arrivals up in our chilly climate: pea tips, Arugula, Lettuces, Wild Spinach (Lamb’s Quarter), a tad of Mizuna. Farmer Kristin’s Serving Suggestion is to use a green onion dressing, but anything you like will do just fine. The arugula has little holes in it; these are harmless and ickless, just voids left by the organic gardener’s companion, flea beetles. We will be battling them with Neem Oil this week … But in the meantime, don’t hate the holes.
Green Onions – Use both the tops (similar to chives) and the bottoms (mini onions basically). Tops can be used in a dip with sour cream or cream cheese, or added into your radish leaf pesto! The greens don’t stay fresh as long as the white bottoms, so use them first! Serve with Booker T and the M.G.s.
a Jar of Preserves – Depending on your predestined fate, you have received either marmalade we made with fresh oranges in Arizona in March, cactus jelly made from prickly pear cacti fruits in Texas in January , preserves from raspberries that we picked fresh from a neighboring farm, sweet pickles made from pumpkins we grew last year, or garden huckleberry (aka Wonderberry) syrup or jelly or sauce, from last year’s field. Or maybe something else that we can’t remember right now.
(Note: The first week is a light box – the early spring was dry, and the season was slow to warm up. Really, the first box is always light, and even the second and third ones are too – we have a short growing season and there’s not a whole lot growin’ on. Fear not; future boxes will be heavier and heavier …)
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Recently in pictures:
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innoculating oak logs with shiitake mushroom spores with friends of the farm
Vengeance; a cutworm’s guts show the color of the plant it had spent the night munching onadded a sawdust bucket composting toilet to the guest trailer
shielding tender transplants from a blazing afternoon
evil radish munchers were here
torching weedlings, pre-seedlings
So, here is a zombie fly. It has been infected by a fungus that fills it to bursting, then hijacks its little brain and forces it to climb up in something tall, assume a specific position with its butt in the air and its proboscis stuck to a leaf, and then it finishes hollowing out its guts and bursts out in white bands between the segmented exoskeleton, in a spray of spores. Go, nature! They are all over the tomatoes and scared us, but they’re harmless to the plants it seems.Moth with a 6″ wingspan’ on the trailerhow we rollDoes a bear poop in the woods? No, it poops in our front path
We’ve been kept incredibly busy dealing with a series of challenges that have given us much to do … and plenty of opportunities to practice saying “que sera, sera” and letting go of stressing over potential dooms!
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Like bosses in the first levels of video games, our Spring challenges started out easy enough. First, there was the incredibly dry and droughty spring – we wound up irrigating in April for the first time ever! We set up the 600 gallon rainwater collection tanks to gravity feed to a sprayer hose we could walk up and down the rows of seedlings – and since there wasn’t much rain to collect, we ran the pump using solar power on sunny days, filling them with well water.
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Next came the quack grass. We’d known it was in the field and all around us, but this spring it came on with a vengeance, sprouting up in thick mats throughout the field. And so we did some research – and identified the species as one of the most notorious and loathed garden weeds on earth. The waving green blades were just the visible tip of the treacherous iceberg; quack grass forms dense mats of allelopathic root rhizomes that choke out other plants, and it spreads like a cancer if left unchecked. There is no easy way to eradicate it (you could choose to not grow any crops for a year or two while you either smother your entire garden with thick plastic, or till the whole thing every few weeks for an entire season … not options for us!)
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We knew we couldn’t totally defeat it, but we had to fight it back enough to keep it off our crops and prevent it from getting worse – so we got into warrior mode and went into battle. That may sound like an exaggeration, but it’s not. Each row we planted, we broadforked to loosen the soil around the grass roots. Then hand weeded out the long, ropey rhizomes – commonly up to two feet long – and if you break them and leave pieces in the ground, they will re-sprout from the bits, like the Hydra’s heads. Our hands became deeply stained black with soil, as we slowly reclaimed rows one at a time from the grassy menace.
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Then came the voles. Voles! I thought they were just cute little field mice. I even saved one’s life last year. Now, I regret that – now, I want them all dead. Not moles; moles eat bugs, whereas voles eat your crops. They create crazy tunnel mazes throughout your field, from which they can launch ambushes.
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exposed vole tunnel meandering down last year’s potato rows
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They lurk, feasting on your emerging garlic beneath the mulch, and waiting until you transplant all of your kohlrabi out into the field after nurturing them from seeds. And then they tunnel right through the row and eat those lovely kohlrabi’s roots right off, leaving them to wilt and die slowly while you watch, uncomprehending … until you pull the first completely dead plant out to autopsy, and discover the tunnel where the roots used to be.
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casualties of the Vole War – de-rooted kohlrabi in the hospital after being taken back in from the front (aka field)
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Voles live in colonies and reproduce furiously all year round. They worship Satan and dance upon the graves of children. After you catch one in a snap trap, they all learn to avoid them and bury them in dirt whenever you try to sneak one into a tunnel mouth. Science has shown that the only good vole is a dead vole. Unfortunately, they are harder to kill than Steven Seagal.
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Our survival strategy for the Vole Challenge was threefold:
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1) we dug trenches down each side of new rows and left them bare of mulch for the time being – thus cutting off shallow tunnel networks and creating barriers of openess that the secretive rodents would be loath to cross.
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2) We brought mass death to one of their main lairs – the hugelkultur mound we’ve been building near the greenhouse. The buried pile of logs and branches proved ideal habitat for the beasts, and their burrow holes peppered the surface; we called it the Vole Hotel. The day we discovered the kohlrabi had been decimated by the little monsters, we got innovative. I used some plumbing and vent tape to rig up an adapter between a garden hose and the van’s exhaust. Then I plugged up all the burrow holes but one in the vole hotel, and filled their nest with sweet, sweet carbon monoxide.
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Payback for our kohlrabi! Exterminating the Vole Hotel with carbon monoxide.
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It worked! But there were still all the voles in the field … which brought us to:
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3) we gave up on our plan of ‘No-Till’ gardening, for now. Que sera, sera! It turns out that voles thrive under the same conditions that we had created to nurture our soil, and tilling was the time-honored method to take out their tunnels and reduce their ability to decimate a garden.
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So we sent out an S.O.S. to our wonderful neighbors Dave & Marcie – and they came riding in on a shining green steed, a John Deere tractor with a PTO tiller attachment – and chewed up the portion of the field not yet planted. It was disappointing to have to till after all, but it felt great to set the vile voles back enough to buy our transplants some breathing room to grow without being devoured.
Cutworms are gross caterpillars that live just beneath the surface of your garden. Like vampires, they emerge to feed at night – climbing up your young tender crops and devouring them – sometimes just the leaves, but all too often chewing through their stems and killing the entire plant.
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And this has been a boom year for cutworms; they have simply decimated our direct-seeded radishes, lettuce, spinach, and turnip plants, chewing them up as soon as they emerge from the ground.
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Every morning, we start our day with a walk. Not a nice looking-at-nature-and-smiling-at-the-sky walk – a grim hunt through the field, stalking through the rows of transplanted cabbage, kale, broccoli, looking for the telltale chewed up holes, fallen leaves, and felled plants that indicate a cutworm has been munching in the night. When such damage is seen, we dig through the soil all around the ravaged plant, sifting and probing until we discover the culprit or culprits and squish their green* guts out. (*purplish, if they’ve been eating the Red Russian kale) In the night, we stalk through the field with flashlights, squishing the worms we catch in the act.
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So far, in spite of our vigilance and the scores of squished bugs in our wake, the damage is unrelenting. We’ve lost a lot of plants to these horrible bugs – we can keep most of the transplants alive through constant vigilance, but the tiny direct seeded plants are really taking a beating. Although we planted well more than we needed, the losses are mounting, and it can be a struggle to avoid falling into despair in the face of the enemies arrayed against us.
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But overall, we’re doing alright – it’s interesting, even when it feels overwhelming. We knew this wouldn’t be easy, we anticipated unexpected obstacles and setbacks – we even named our farm with this in mind.
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So, we let ourselves feel whatever sadness or anxiety is appropriate for just a bit – and then gird up for battle; put on a bloodlusty grin, and wade into the thick of it – rending the destroyers and avenging our fallen crops.
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Farming is war.
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And fortunately, we have a great battle cry:
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Que sera, seraaaaaAAAAAAAA!
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some Pictures!
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baiting the electric fence with sweet syrup, so deer learn to fear it
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it takes a village to raise a farm! Jim Sehr, Neighbor Dave, and the truck driver helping unload the giant delivery of the future high tunnel greenhouse
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the giant egg turned out to be a double yolker
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heating up the hot tub – great way to loosen up sore muscles and caked on dirt!hens working in the field in one of our two chicken tractors
new waterproof roof completed over the Albatross guesthouse, thanks to Jim!
putting down a thick weed barrier and mulch
transplanting!the gorgeous feral lilacs are in bloom
at a local farm getting loaded up with rounds of old hay for mulch
loading up compost for transplantingbuilt a chicken composter box in their yard – they can eat lots of good scraps, while mixing it up with the dead leaves
relaxing in the Albatross guesthouse after a long day afield – it has working lights now!
We’ve been back on the Farm since mid-March, getting things started for the year …
cleaning out the chimney cap
It’s been a month of preparation: hooking the solar power and rainwater collection systems back up, moving and fixing up the new guesthouse (a ’58 mobile home we got free on Craigslist), getting a new flock of laying hens, upgrading the nest boxes, turning dead trees into firewood, setting up fences, planning upgrades to the rainwater system, paying taxes, layering the hugelkultur mound, preparing for the coming 70×30′ high tunnel, and, of course, soaking in the hillbilly hot tubs.
the 1958 Glider Albatross – our new guest cabin
old tractor tires & former tabletop repurposed as front steps on the Albatross
harvesting dinner from the field – parsnips that survived the winter
Gabe Sehr: Rhizome Hunter of the Hugelkultur, Destroyer of Crab Grass
this pine tree blew partway over in a spring windstorm – we made a sling from an old tractor tire tube and anchored it back upright to re-root
we got ten 2-year old hens; they provide about 7 jumbo-sized eggs a daythe hens run toward the axe on our farm – because it means we’re breaking some carpenter ant treats out of a log
Neighbor Dave doing some tractormancy on a pile of aged horse manure, to prepare the soil for the new high tunnel greenhouse
handwashing and line drying; not too bad, but the wringing part is a pain.
Cleo may be almost 15 & a bit limpy, but she still loves life on the farm“Science,” the free deeeep freezer we got on Craigslist to use as our fridge (in conjunction w/ the buried chest freezer pseudo-root cellar) – it once went down to 120 below. The alarm still works.
new nesting boxes from inside the coop
the Albatross came with some weird plastic cabinet things; we used their sliding doors for eas,y egg-gathering from outside, with the female edge of cheap pine paneling as the tracks
Foreman Jim and Kristin starting work on the new waterproof Albatross roof
the hens, minus Broody McBrooderson who hangs out alone on her own perch, off camerachickens considering free-ranging right up the ladder with Jim
Widget knows the River Road well enough by this point
suspected double-yolker, and the biggest egg we’ve ever seen. Scientists theorize this was the consequence of Broody McBrooderson eating a bunch of venison sausage.
We got Jim some bee-keeping gear for Christmas, and he took a class … next thing you know, he’s in a bee suit, you’re helping dump a hive of bees into a box, and everyone is getting stung. Except for the man in the suit of course …
Jim & Kristin up on the new roofPepe, our new rooster – he’s in heaven here
But primarily, it’s been all about the seeds. This is our first year starting seedlings off grid, without either the electricity to run banks of lights or the controlled heat of a modern home – so we’ve had to do some improvising.
making soil blocks for seed starting – a mix made from compost we made last year, Perlite, peat moss, lime, blood meal, green sand, and rock phosphate
For next spring, we plan to have a wood fired, slow-release heating system installed in the greenhouse – a “rocket mass heater” that stores heat in a clay and stone bench running the length of the greenhouse, which we can germinate seeds on and leave plants overnight when temps drop down. But for this year, there was no time to build it …
So at first, we tried propane heat. We quickly discovered that it is far too expensive to try to maintain temperatures overnight in a structure that is not really made to hold heat – the thin plastic is great for letting sunlight in and holding the heat briefly, but when there is no sun and the temps are below freezing, a 200 square foot hoophouse will quickly drain your bank account – as well as leave you stressing about a propane cylinder going empty in the middle of the night and costing you everything you’ve worked so hard to start.
the dogs grazing on the crab grass coming up in the greenhouse, long before it appeared outdoors
Cleo is over the cold & ready to enjoy the Greenhouse Effect
The first seedlings started were the cool weather crops – hardy specimens that can survive chilly air and soil, such as lettuce, broccoli, and kale. We also got some more perennials going – asparagus and rhubarb.
you’ve heard of Baby Kale – this is Newborn Kale …
Using a handy digital thermometer with a probe (which lets us take readings in two separate locations), we experimented with different techniques for maintaining adequate temperature, and discovered that if we put the flats on the ground of the greenhouse at night and layered them with row cover fabric, the warmth of the earth keeps the trays several degrees warmer than the rest of the greenhouse.
using cold climate greenhouse tactics similar to those promoted by Eliot Coleman and Helen and Scott Nearing
When it is very cold, we bring them up into the trailer with us, to stay toasty with the heat from our wood stove.
This set the stage for the next wave of seedlings – the much more sensitive hot weather plants such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.
These seeds will not germinate well unless soil temperatures are at least 80 degrees – and once they finally do emerge, the plants don’t like it much cooler than that, either – no lower than 50. So, we started a new regimen to accommodate them.
On clear days, when the sun warms the greenhouse up in the 80 to 100 degree range, we set up the warm-weather plants on the greenhouse shelves, to benefit from both the heat and the sunlight.
During these times, the cool weather crops are moved outside, to temperatures more to their liking, as well as into the wind and more direct sunlight that they need to get, in preparation for being transplanted into the open field.
We used the storm-ravaged mosquito gazebo frame and some row cover to build them a shelter, which keeps the sunlight moderated during the strongest times of day.
For nighttime and for still-germinating seeds (which require no sun and more heat), we hung ceiling-to-floor curtains in our trailer, dividing it into three areas: the living room with its big bright windows (which lose heat at night), the kitchen in the middle with the woodstove, and the bedroom in the rear of the trailer. Rearranging the furniture allowed us to set up a big wire shelving rack in the middle zone, capable of holding almost 20 flats of seedlings. The uppermost (warmest) shelves became our germination area – the curtains trap much of the heat from the woodstove, allowing us to easily maintain temperatures between 70 and 100 degrees overnight for the seeds to germinate within, without roasting ourselves to death while we sleep in the rear.
In the mornings, we load the sprouted trays into the van and move them “downstairs” into the protected sunny greenhouse. If it’s warm enough, the cool weather crops (which spend the nights on the greenhouse floor) get moved outside into the gazebo shelter. And then when the sun goes down, we bring them back into the greenhouse, and load the hot weather plants back into the van for a trip “upstairs” to their woodheated shelving in the trailer with us.
It’s a lot of shuffling trays back and forth and all around, but we’ve gotten pretty good at the process, handing the trays off from one person to the other at the doorways, using bread trays to move two flats at once, and making it a smooth and painless habit, a simple and quick routine. And because we’re here with the seedlings full-time (last year we did our germination in Kristin’s folks’ basement), we can pay close attention to maintaining consistent moisture levels, avoiding extremes of dry or wet soil that cause problems.
Not only does it work for us – it seems to be working great for the plants. This year we have the strongest and healthiest looking seedlings we’ve had yet – strong stems, glowing leaves, high germination rates, and no sign of damping off, yellow leaves, or other signs of stressed or unhappy seedlings.
Of course, just as it gets easier and feeling under control, it’s time for the next phase of things – this week we started planting seeds out in the field – so far, onions and snap peas, with lettuce and spinach on the to-do list next.
This means weeding rows and beds, planting, and mulching … making this a great time of year to come out and help if you’re interested in volunteering; there’s a lot to do, but it’s not hot and there aren’t any mosquitoes, gnats, or flies to speak of … yet!
no mosquitoes, but maybe a bear or two
2015 is off to an awesome start – I know there is no certainty when it comes to the future especially in farming, and ‘whatever will be, will be’ – but I’m predicting the best year yet!
We’ve wanted to build an earth oven for some time now – we have a small camper oven, but it doesn’t really work that well, and we like to use the abundant free oak wood for fuel when we can, rather than pay for propane. We finally got our chance to try our hands at it at Habitable Spaces – where they encouraged us to build some kind of structure before we left.
Three unrelated projects that we’d helped with in December & January led us to decide on the earth oven build:
First, when we were digging postholes to fence off their first major field, we discovered that the subsoil was a rich, malleable clay, perfect for sculpting and building with.
Kristin & Ali digging post holes
Secondly, we dismantled and felled the giant tower, made from three massive cable spools stacked upon one another – revealing a perfectly useable concrete foundation pad beneath.
Lily posing on the tower foundation – the 3 spools can be seen in the background where we rolled them away post-demo
Third, we’d spent a lot of time scavenging the ruins of two old homesteads on their property, which had been home to Shane’s grandmother and other ancestors. We metal detected and scrounged, and Gabe created a skullpture with items we discovered throughout January.
Lola helping Kristin scavenge in the ruins of Shane’s grandmother’s Depression-era homestead
“Homestead #2” required us to chop through a thick stand of cacti to get to … prickly work
Kingsbury Totem: wild boar skull with homestead bullet, board knots, cow bell, bed spring, melted aluminum blobs, & other artifacts, secured with scraps of old barbed wire etc
In our scavenging, we discovered piles of old bricks, and several dozen partially-buried split limestone blocks, at both sites – these had once been house foundations. We’d excavated them when we found them, and left them propped up on the surface for possible retrieval later on.
Once we realized we wanted to create an earth oven, we decided these blocks would be the perfect base to build upon – beautiful, free, and full of the character and history of the land. So we borrowed the farm truck and a wheelbarrow, and got to collecting …
all the foundation blocks from Homestead #2 – we got another load the next day from Shane’s Grandma’s place. (we’d brought home a load of bricks from both sites weeks earlier without any specific plan for them)
Kristin ordered a book on earth oven construction – this would be our Bible for the duration of the construction project that we embarked on, not sure if we’d even have time to finish it before we had to head to Austin in three weeks …
We began mortaring in the blocks, one tier at a time, spending hours fitting the stones together with minimal gaps and maximum stability/levelness.
Lily hanging out inside of tier one – the largest & thickest foundation blocks
as we neared the top, we worked in two tiers of old homestead bricks – and were proud (& sort of amazed!) when the top was level across from side to side in all directions
we filled gaps with flame-colored flint rocks, thinking they looked ember-esque. (The true color of the blocks shows most clearly when wet – it will be some time before the chalky mortar dust finishes washing off)
Next we mixed the first batch of insulation – clay slip and pine shavings – the shavings dry up and even burn out completely, leaving air pockets and a clay-foam heat barrier.
mixing insulation from clay slip & pine shavings
The insulating clay was used to fill a foot-deep layer designed to prevent the infinite thermal heat sink of the ground from leaching away the oven’s heat. We included a layer of wine bottles, and a layer of beer bottles (from the bottle house supply pile) – these would form stable insulating air pockets within the insulation clay.
wine bottle layer being filled in with clay slip/wood shaving insulation mud
we’d found a racoon skull in the woods back in January – the scavenger spirits wanted it included within the base, so we packed it with sand and tucked it in, where it will likely remain for a century or two …
Kristin does the Tamping Dance – we filled the lower base with a mix of sand and crushed glass (necks left over from bottle bricks used in the ongoing bottle-house construction, visible in the background)
Once we got within four inches of the top of the base, we paused to mix up a batch of “oven mud” – clay and coarse sand. Oven mud clay is designed to hold heat for baking – it would be roughly the same clay used to build the interior of the oven dome, later on.
it turned out that mixing oven mud barefoot was not the happy hippie dance party that we’d been led to believe it would be.
The sand we were using was quite rough & coarse – ideal for structural stability, but also quite good at abrading one’s feet completely off. We quickly switched to our rubber muck boots for stomp-mixing. (It might have been easier if the mix was wetter, but we wanted to avoid slumping and long drying times, so we kept it as dry as possible.)
The first batch of oven mud was used to make an oven pad, in the same dimensions as the firebrick interior baking floor would have (we laid out the firebricks on the ground to determine the measurements).
We created a wood frame and packed it with the oven mud to make a subfloor heat pad
Then we filled in the surrounding gaps with more insulation mix, keeping everything level with the top exterior bricks.
In the meantime, we’d created several “test bricks” with different proportions of sand and clay – as well as one of pure soil (from the layer above the clay, but beneath the topsoil).
For the oven interior dome, we wanted to find what ratio would be strongest, and crack or shrink the least. The bricks dried out over a couple of days while we prepared for next steps and gave the water-soaked base insulation time to dry out some.
We decided that a ratio of 1.5 parts sand to 1 part clay was our ideal target, based on the test bricks
Next we worked on the arch opening. The book said that the ideal opening height was 63% of the interior dome, but we had to go just slightly higher to get a nice stable arch, with good supportive edge-to-edge contact throughout. We also tested to make sure that Habitable Spaces’ pizza peel would fit through (yep, just right!)
laying out the arch, using scavenged homestead bricks – old bricks are actually better than most modern bricks for durability under heat stress.
The resulting arch shape was traced onto plywood – Ali helped cut out two pieces in the proper shape and build a form by joining them together with 2x4s. This supported the bricks while we spaced them out with pebbles, and filled in the gaps with oven mud mortar.
We had to shave a 1/4″ off the bottom in order to keep the height low while still allowing shims beneath – these shims would allow us to easily remove the form later.
We also started work on the protective roof – while rain wouldn’t destroy the oven, it would saturate the clay, requiring many more hours of firing time to get it up to temp, and shortening the working life of the oven. There were a couple short pieces of roofing left over from the house and kitchen, perfect for our needs. We scavenged together some cedar posts and scraps with lovely knotty character, wanting to make the roof match the organic, natural appeal of the oven’s base.
Before starting the next phase of the build, we mixed up a huge batch of oven mud, making it a little bit wet and leaving time for it to dry out a bit, before we launched the most significant single piece of the construction – the interior dome.
we decided to test out the concrete mixer for making the sand & clay for the oven mud – and boy was it a time and effort saver! (Especially since we wound up making two to three times more than we actually needed …) We still foot/tarp mixed it, but only after a pre-mix tour through the mixer
First, we built the sand mold, like a sandcastle – this was the shape of what would become the void within the oven. We sprayed it with water and patted it tightly as we worked, attempting to create a smooth, flowing interior that fire and hot gas would roll through nicely.
building the void – sand form almost completed (with the beginnings of the roof visible in the background)
The hardest part of the sand form was the newspaper layer, which would help us remove the sand from the clay later – it was frustrating to get it to stay smooth and in place, but we learned as we went, using lots of water, and smaller pieces of paper.
The sand form and the oven mud interior layer had to be done the same day – we we launched immediately into it.
packing the oven mud interior layer
The going was slow, as we carefully packed the oven mud into place, a fist-sized chunk at a time, maintaining a consistent 3″ thickness, and only applying force into existing clay (not into the fragile sand form). A CD we’d bought in Austin from the musician Kiko Villamizar played on repeat for hours – it was not the first or the last time the album provided the soundtrack to our work, but it was the longest continuous stretch.
We each worked from one side of the arch to the back, meeting in the middle – and then switched sides for the next layer, so that any idiosyncrasies in our individual methods would be evenly distributed on either side, and layered with the other’s style.
step by step, blob by blob – higher & higher …
Darkness fell, and we set up lights on each side so we could finish the vital layer.
While the interior oven mud layer dried, we left it alone and spent a day working on the protective roof, not wanting to impatiently cause a collapse.
Once it seemed dry and stable, we filled in a couple of drying cracks with oven mud, and pulled out the arch form to reveal the sand within.
sand behind the arch form – we let it sit open to help the oven mud dry out more from within
Then it was time to scoop out the sand form, and create the void.
removing sand form, with the roof in the background
interior layer complete! the five firebricks within and beneath the arch are not for baking (they lack the thick subfloor heat pad – the outer support the arch, and the inner 3 allow bread or pizza to be slid in and out from the baking surface)
Once the oven mud was stable and we’d pulled the sand out, we started on the next layer – 4 inches of the same wood shaving/clay slip insulation that we’d used in the base. This layer went much more quickly – the insulation was simple to mix, and fast to apply and shape in big double handfuls.
Widget & Cleo loved hanging out beneath the roof-in-progress & watching us work – here, the insulation layer is almost completed
The next day, we started the first-ever fire inside – a drying fire, which we kept going for about two straight days, speeding along the drying of the water-soaked insulation – we needed it to be mostly dry before we applied the final exterior clay, and we were quickly running out of time at Habitable Spaces.
at first, we kept the drying fire small …… but as the insulation began to harden, we grew bolder and build a sweeping wave of flame, moving the fire around the interior throughout the days and enjoying the way it moved through the oven
In order to use the oven effectively before we left, we had to dry out not just the insulation layer over the dome, but the insulation down in the base – which was now wicking moisture up, into the dome, and out into the air as the top dried out more and more.
steam exuding from the insulation, driven out by the fire inside
While we burned the drying fire for days, we built a baking door out of cedar scraps – this would seal in the heat of the oven after a fire had heated up the clay thoroughly, the embers had been removed, and the pizza or bread or pie was inside.
baking door – plugs the entrance, sealing in heat
We also mocked up a simple “fire door” – not totally necessary, but nice to have on windy days when the fire is struggling to breathe due to turbulence. Cool fresh air comes in the bottom to feed the flames, and hot gases and smoke swirl out the top of the arch and above the door.
the metal fire door also reflects radiant heat back into the oven, for added efficiency
It was rainy on the final day of the drying fire, so we put the unfinished roof over the oven as it continued to dehydrate. We prepared for the final coat by mixing up a big batch of exterior mud the day before – this consisted of a new mix:
some fine playground sand,
a bunch of subsoil (above the clay layer and beneath the topsoil – we did a soil test with a jar of water that indicated it contained mostly very fine sand),
some clay (about 1 part to the 2 parts of fine sand), and
about 3 gallons of fresh cow manure (for the smooth strength of the fine fiber of 7-times digested grass)
adding in the secret ingredient – cow poop!
the exterior mud was much softer than the interior clay – squishy & without rough sharp sand in it – barefootable! (as long as a little cow poop doesn’t scare ya)
cleaning out the last of the sand. the insulation layer has baked almost dry, so we let the long drying fire go out, in preparation for application of the final exterior clay
final exterior mud
the “Bible” told us to “schmear” the final layer on like frosting, but we found it much more effective to throw it on by the handful – “splat! splat! splat!”
flingin’ poo
Once we had a 2-4″ layer of plaster mud all over, we got to work shaping and decorating – smoothing, adding flame and ember colored rocks around the base and arch, and sculpting flames and heat waves in the mud …
We had just two days left before we were leaving Habitable Spaces – and we were determined to be able to eat some food from the oven before we left!
So we started a new drying fire inside, knowing that the fast drying would likely lead to cracking, but willing to take our chances.
cracking of the exterior plaster
There was, indeed, considerable cracking due to the fast-drying action of the fire, but the scary-looking cracks turned out to be easy to fix – we waited until it was dried out and stable, then filled them in with a wet mix of the same plastering material.
The warm exterior (from the sunshine and drying fire) caused the repair slip to dry almost instantly, creating a rough surface – which led us to the discovery that some wirebrushing created a nice light color, which highlighted the flame patterns pleasantly.
We built some tools from the junkpile (a scraper, a cleaning swab, and a fire blowing tube) – and eagerly awaited the next day: our final full day at Habitable Spaces, and the day we would finally test the oven out on some food!
We tinkered and smoothed and prepared throughout the day and the following afternoon …
the interior reveals the clump-by-clump construction method of the oven mud layer
We kept the drying fire going – now it was going to provide the heat for the first baking!
Kristin prepared two kinds of pizza dough – Neapolitan & New York style, and we soaked the inside of the cedar baking door by floating it in a large bucket, in order to minimize burning/charring.
Finally, we there in the first pizza, which sizzled satisfyingly as it hit the firebrick. Within minutes, delicious scents began wafting from the narrow gaps around the baking door …
baking the first pizza behind the soaked door
first ever pizza emerges!! (We got better at shaping the subsequent five pizzas, which had various combinations of bacon, caramelized onions, mushrooms, herbs, garlic, cheeses, pickled jalepenos …)
And five minutes later, we pulled the first pizza from the oven. (It will take less time in the future, once the oven is finished drying out – at first, it loses efficiency to the energy that water takes to steam out.)
We baked into the night, leaving each pizza in for one minute longer than the last, until we were all too full to eat another slice and we’d exhausted our supply of ingredients. Then we threw a shortbread crust in for awhile, took it out and added a filling of blackberries, apple, ginger, and sugar, and replaced it inside for another 40 minutes of baking.
When it was done (and devoured), we used the considerable remaining heat to overnight slow cook a cast iron pot of beans with jalepenos, pepper, and cumin for our breakfast tacos the following day – our last morning at Habitable Spaces, capping off our wonderful two-month stay!
Postscript:
A couple of days after we left, Shane and Alison sent us the photos below – while they were soaking the door (in preparation for a bakefest of 8 pizzas & a loaf of bread), both a chicken and a cat had decided that the earth oven was a “habitable space,” indeed ….
It was a lot of work but incredibly rewarding and fun – we’re looking forward to visiting again to eat from it someday … and we can’t wait to build our own, back home on our farm!!
