Mud pies and sand castles or pie in the sky dreams?

23 September 2012
Week Eight

Well, so much for building anticipation by showing all the steps and slowly explaining how we did this before revealing the completed work. Lol. I've never been one for surprises much and I really like how this turned out so I wanted this pic to be the top of the page. "Layer One - clay bread oven, Sept 2012"

Needless to say we spent the weekend in every (ok, most?) child's dream ... making mud pies and building sand castles ... squishing the clay and sand mix between our toes and under our feet, slapping it together with sticky grimy hands, splashing water on each other. And in the middle of it all we had to stop and build a giant wet sand dome shaped 'just so' to act as support for our clay walls. It was every bit as fun as playing in the big dirt pile when we were kids but a whole lot more rewarding in the end!! It's probably a good thing I didn't know about these ovens when I was a kid or my mom and dad would've had a whole yard full of them. As it was they has brick turtles pens and whole house plans built from walls of leaves ... me and cob would have been a nightmare!

So, anyway, here's a few more pics from our weekend adventure.

Good ol' Oklahoma Red Dirt

Our base layer

Breaking up the clay

Kneading the cob

The oven base and beginning of the walls

Mixing sand with water to form the dome

Sand dome covered with newspapers and walls going up

Finished first layer with door cut out

Honestly the only part that was a pain in the neck was forming the sand dome inside the clay base. It kept falling all over the place and judging how steep to make the walls and how high to build it wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. But we finally got it done and then we had to fight to keep the wet newspapers stuck to it. They wanted to fly off in the wind. At one point I just gave up and started throwing clay on it so the inside of the oven may be kind of wrinkled-y but no one will see that part anyway. I'm already drooling over the bread and pizzas that are going to come out of this - chicken pesto, eggplant and onion, sourdough bouille, etc ...

Pie in the sky?? Well, in the midst of us playing in the mud and building with wet sand, we found out that the 26 acres of land that we have been drooling over for the last two years, which is only 30 miles from my parents, was dropped in price by half. Obviously they needed to come down in price given the land sat there for two years with no movement, but we never expected it to ever be in our price range. However, and this is where the pie-in-the-sky dream comes in, even though it's in our price range we can't even start to arrange financing for it until January when we pay off our car ... and we just don't imagine it will stay on the market for very long now. If it were only "money falling out of the sky" instead of "pie in the sky", we'd have it made. I guess what will be will be. I thought of starting a fund for donations ... I could call it the mud pie fund and everyone who donates gets to spend a weekend with us "living the farm life" and take home fresh eggs and veggies. It would only take 1,000 people giving us $75 each and we'd have it made ...

Ah, ... pie in the sky!

County fair, the golden egg, and mad chickens

17 September 2012
Week 7 (I think ...)

Well the county fair started last Tuesday with all of the frustration and turmoil it could muster. I'm sure most people think of the county fair as a celebration, a time to eat all the junk food their steel stomachs can handle and ride as many rides around and around and around in circles as they can without throwing up. But for those of us who enter items in the fair to be judged, it is a different place entirely. The weeks and months before are spent in preparation of jams and jellies, knitting sweaters, quilting together all manner of fabrics, raising chicks, and raising crops all for the chance to compete against our neighbors. Any more those neighbors for competing against are few and far between it seems.

When we first started entering things in the fair, it seemed like a foreign world and no one told us the rules, but we learned quickly. The first year we entered our sand plum jelly, thinking everyone in the county must enter sand plum jelly, and it was the only jar of it there. The next year we entered a new jar of that most native of foods and it stood next to one other jar listed in the "other" category. Ten years later sand plum jelly had it's own category and stood in competition to 56 other jars. This year, our jar had but 3 lonely companions.

There's always an ebb and flow to what people produce and enter into the county fair, however, last year the ebb and flow was seriously curtailed by a change in the manner of entry. Someone somewhere decided that the system of entering and tracking who, what, when, where, and how much at the fair in all the various categories could more effeciently be done on the computer instead of in the manner it had been done for the last 70 something years. It was an overwhelming failure. Most people, frustrated and confused by the lack of communication and organization of the "new and improved" system, just gave up and left without entering a single thing. And very few returned this year.

We, on the other hand, persevered and entered 28 jars of canned goods, 1 loaf of bread, 1 plate of sweet potatoes, 3 bantam chickens, 5 rabbits, 2 turkeys, and 4 ducks. And in the end came home with 32 first place ribbons, 7 second place ribbons, and 3 third place ribbons along with 2 Grand Champions, 2 Reserve Grand Champions, 4 Champions, 2 reserve Champions, and 3 Ball Canning Awards. All in all it wasn't a bad haul, however, our animals were highly stressed out by the end of the week.

Our silkie here was a little freaked out by all the noise and commotion of the animal barn and proceeded to bite anyone who came near unless I was holding him. He and the two girls next to him were probably the most talked about birds at the fair. Admittedly they are odd looking compared to other chickens.

But this little jewel was our biggest surprise of the week. A turkey egg, notable for it's spotted coloring!! One of our turkeys laid eggs last year for a few weeks but it wasn't until December and they weren't fertile. This year we have boys and girls but certainly weren't expecting eggs for another couple of months. We're not sure if the horrid hot weather we've had this year made them lay early or what. I guess we'll keep watch and see what happens over the next few weeks. I just can't imagine them hatching out babies in the cold as turkeys are hot weather birds.

Playing in the clay, duck eggs, and sprained ankles

10 September 2012
Week Six

Well, we finally did it. We went and got some soil to use for building the clay bread oven. I wish I had dancing smilies on her right now because I would be using them. I am so excited about this project. I've been planning it for so long now and we finally are at the moment of building it. Here's some of the pics from mixing test bricks, and testing the test bricks.

So, here is a mix of soil, water, and sand. We added different percentages of sand to the soil to make test bricks for our cob.

Here's the bricks that range in percentage of sand from 0% to 300%. After 300% the bricks just wouldn't hold together any more.

We left them to dry in the sun for two days, turning them over several times to make sure they dried evenly.

And here the bricks are dried for two days. If there ever is a next time we will let them dry for three days because a couple of the bricks weren't quite dry in the middle.

We took each brick and dropped it straight down. All but the last two, with the smallest amount of sand in them broke in some way, however, the first few actually crumbled when they hit and then the next two just broke cleanly.

We're going to use about a 25% mix of soil to sand for the inside layer of the oven to make sure it holds up to the heat. Then the outer layer(s) will be about 50% sand with straw added for strength. The very outer most layer will be straight clay as I plan on sculpting some decorations into the outside of this oven to make it mine and to make it something beautiful to look at. I can hardly wait to get to play in the mud!! My favorite thing ever!

And while the clay oven may be the most exciting thing to me that happened this week, it certainly wasn't all that happened. On Friday I sprained my ankle. Thankfully it wasn't too bad but it still required a little hobbling, ice packs, and rest before it started feeling better. The weather was just too beautiful though to pass by so I hobbled myself out to the garden and propped my foot up on a milk crate with lawn cushions and our kitten Monkey. (She is hands down THE friendliest cat in the world.)

We also got our first duck egg this week, and have had one every day since. We're not sure which duck is laying them but we're pretty sure both of our ducks eggs will be fertile once we decide to hatch them. That's a project for winter I think though when we're stuck inside twiddling our thumbs and dreaming about all the warm beautiful *cough cough* (read HOT and MUGGY) days of summer to come.

It really is enough ... so just stop right there

5 September 2012
Week 5

Yikes! Where did the time go? I've been trying to post on Sunday or Monday for a late but here it is Wednesday and I haven't even thought about what I'm blogging on this week ... or er, um, ... last week. I can't even remember what we did last week. It's all such a blur.

Let's see ...
1. killed a lot of squash bugs ... but there's still more everyday to kill. Where do they all come from?
2. got more garden planted ... here's a pic of Morgan planting beans for her gardening project.

3. built shelves in the garage out of free pallets from the local lumber yard but I forgot to take pics along the way so you'll have to use your imagination, I guess (kind of funny - free lumber from the lumber yard!)
4. Oh, yeah, I worked three days. That's where a lot of time went. How could I forget that?
5. We rehung the waterer in the coop so that it wasn't hanging by the doorway where they all crowd in and spill it everywhere. (now they just spill it in the middle of the floor instead ... sigh)
6. watered the garden a lot ... since it decided to get hot again
7. went to my mom's vocal concert in Stillwater ... not bad ... and that's all I'm willing to publish
8. son came home from college for the long weekend
9. went to the well and got water
10. went to the movie and saw BRAVE ... it was interesting but I'm not sure what the point was other than you have to be brave to face up to a bear. kind of knew that already only I always called it being stupid, rather than brave

That's ten things. Is that enough?

Of course that's not ALL we did. I also spent some time this week just scratching my head in wonder and throwing out the odd question or two on matters regarding Heirloom seeds, the bashing of anyone and everyone who doesn't agree with what's being said, and God.

I love this.

I don't know where it came from originally or who first posted it where. One of my "like" pages on facebook shared it and I passed it on. In this day and age when it seems like so many people are only concerned with loving those who agree with them or bashing those who don't agree with them ... whether that's politically or medically or educationally or religiously or environmentally ... THIS is how I feel. It's one thing to promote what you love and agree with and allow others who are like minded and interested to learn from you or share in your love. It's a whole different matter when people start bashing what they hate and pretending that is how they are promoting what they love.

If you love organic food, GREAT!! Go gagga over organic food and tell me everything and anything about organic food and it's greatness ... but don't start telling me I have to hate non-organic food.

If you love heirloom gardening, GREAT!! Go bananas and share the excitement you have over planting only heirlooms ... but don't tell me I can't plant a hybrid tomato and start posting every hate message about GMO's you've ever read.

The world is so full of hate and bashing and abuse of others who are "not like me". It's time for something new and something better for our world than that. Promote what you love ... and leave it at that. Just stop before you go that other step. It is enough to say "I like chocolate" without adding "but I hate strawberries". It really is enough.