Hi, Hilary here, with a run down on what we received and gave for Xmas this year. Bruce had asked for a new bike (ie new to him - his present one is at least 25 years old). I found one for a very reasonable price on allclassifieds, a Canberra-based site that is great for finding stuff that it's not practical to buy on eBay. Becky (my 16-year old daughter) very thoughtfully bought Bruce a pack of brightly coloured potato plates; we ate our Christmas dinner off them, and then saved on the washing up by putting them straight into the worm farm (thus giving the worms an Xmas treat).
Becky received lots of second-hand books and some recycled jeans (as well as some less environmentally friendly gifts, such as Swiss chocolates and enormous leather boots). However, the 'greenest' present was my gift from Bruce, which came in the form of piles of sand, clayey soil, bricks and bits of wood, beautifully gift wrapped in a huge blue tarpaulin. Luckily I'd asked for all this stuff, so I was delighted.
Our biggest use of power is for cooking, and I've experimented over recent years with various options, including a hay box (not at all successful) and a solar cooker (great, but requires at least 5 hours of solid sunshine, and is only really useful in summer). So, inspired by the Earth Garden publication Back Yard Oven, I decided to try to build a cob oven. My parents gave me the latest edition of Build Your Own Earth Oven for my birthday back in May, but I had yet to get round to putting it into practice. Bruce's present to me was the 'ingredients' needed to get started with building the oven.
The book recommends starting with a couple of practice ovens, the first only big enough for a couple of muffins. It wasn't a success, but I learnt a lot and now feel ready to go on to oven number two. Here is an illustrated account of the building of the mini-oven (click on each image to see a larger photo):
The mound of sand (rather too high - it was meant to be 'hemispherical')
The sand covered with a layer of wet newspaper
The final product - I covered the newspaper with a thick layer of dough made from clay and sand, let that dry a bit (because I'd made it too wet), cut out a door (but made it much too small) and cleared out all the sand.
The oven alight, but smoking chokingly rather than burning merrily as it should. The problem was the door being too small, but as the mud and sand mixture had set like rock by the time I realised the error, I couldn't enlarge the door without breaking up the whole thing. I'll know better next time.
Hilary, did you read about these in Grass Roots? There's a cob oven similar to yours in the Feb/March issue
Posted by: Melanie O'Byrne | January 31, 2008 at 10:30 AM