I like the summer, I do. The garden thrives. Biomass! I don’t have to wear socks or break ice in the chicken’s water bucket. The water that’s been cooking in the hose for a couple of days smells of Earth. Staying up late, loving the lateness of the light. On Full Moon nights, I run out …
Monthly Archives: October 2013
Earth Oven, Phase 7: Patching up, and Pizza
The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! The oven mud could have been more clay-ey, but most of the oven has held up well. Not so the part that wasn’t as compacted (it being over the 0pening) Â and …
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Precious Things in Transition
Watching Bill Moyers’  recent interview with Wendell Berry, it was hard not to tear up, because of the sheer beauty of this man, his poetry, his speaking, and his holding both grief and joy in equal measure and balance: It’s hard to think of any thing that’s precious that isn’t endangered. But maybe that’s an advantage. The …
Happy Dance
Funny how a single, tiny blue egg can render a person speechless with awe and happiness. Amie exclaimed: “Nocty and Oreo laid an egg!”
Adding to the Elements
The Life! It’s difficult to keep the whole in mind. Thinking in terms of elements helps. I wrote about elements here and here. In the latter post I listed the elements in place at the homestead, and here I’d like to add (underlined) the few that have been added since then, that are coming up in the …
Gorgeous Day for Baking Cookies
“Mama, can we bake cookies?” Because I suspected that the oven is still too wet to retain enough heat, we put the cookie tray right on the coals (which is cheating, really). The thermometer went up to 400 and then freaked out. Â Cookies came out a little burned but nice and smoky! Steam rising …
Earth Oven, Phase 6: Insulating Layer and Chimney
The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Advice for the novice bricklayer: when building an arch, when done, remove supports and then let cement dry. You guessed it, when removing the supports under my hastily built arch, the …
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Earth Oven, Phase 5: First Drying Fire and Door Arch
The Earth Oven series: foundation base hearth thermal mass first drying fire and door arch insulating layer and chimney Patching up, and first pizza! Today we dug out the sand form. We peeled off the newspaper and checked out the surface on the inside. It’s pretty smooth. After that, we lit a fire, just a small …
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Abundance
It’s been almost two months since the tribe canned the peaches, but our common purchasing did not end there. We also divided almost 7 lbs of locally grown garlic seed among ourselves, and this Thursday my friend and fellow-blogger Andrea hopped in her car and set out for the same farm that sold us the …
We Ate Chicken
Actually Hen-Of-the-Neighborhood-Woods. My mycologist neighbor came by today with a paper bag. In October, after a rain storm, I know exactly what’s in it: mushrooms! It was a gorgeous chicken-of-the-woods, so fresh and soft it was still almost entirely white that new creamy white (compare to last year’s). I fried it in some olive oil …