Back on site for 2012

And we're back! The weather finally gave us conditions that allowed us to do something useful at Windmill today, so we braved the freezing temperatures to cut down a bit of wood for the year's cooking. In fact, we had quite a lot of folk, considering, as regular Mark was joined by Jo and Coryn along with new volunteer Nadine. We also saw the welcome return of Andrew who helped us out last year and long-time friend of Windmill Hugh joined us as well because his allotment was too frozen.

We got a little surprise as well, when we discovered that Mark hadn't just spent his time knocking the snow off the polytunnel on his last visit. He'd decided that we might enjoy a "celebrity appearance" on the site!

Gaia, Earth Goddess
making a surprise appearance at Windmill.

We've been planning to take down some of our willow for a while because Winter is the time to do this, and we intend to cut it on rotation so that we will keep producing enough wood to fuel our rocket stove, clay oven and fires. Only burning our own wood means that we are carbon-neutral overall for much of our cooking, and obviously saves us money. Apart from that, it might not save us time, but it certainly keeps us warm! You've probably heard the saying, "Wood warms you twice. Once when you cut it, once when you burn it."

Nadine helping last years wood to warm us twice

We work without fossil fuels when we can, so we don't use chainsaws as standard. This isn't necessarily a big hardship, because we have a fancy Japanese "Silky" saw which cuts through wood with very little effort and none of our trees is particularly large. It's also on a really long, extendable handle which is brilliant, because it allows us to take the tree down in stages, as well as being just the thing for high pruning. Everyone had a go with the saw, and even those who hadn't tried it out before soon got the hang of things. 

Coryn tries out the Silky

As each of the limbs were taken off, everyone mucked in to help process the wood using saws and loppers. We sorted it into fine material for use when fire lighting, sticks (keeping straight ones aside for the rocket stove), and logs. Just taking down one limb to pollard height created more wood than we could deal with on the day, so we've still got plenty of work to keep us warm next week!

Jo and Coryn turning the tree into kindling, sticks and logs

At the end of the session, we enjoyed some hot soup and a chance to have a look through the Nottingham Organic Gardeners potato list for this year, as it's Potato Day on Saturday (26th January - details in the link). We've chosen a selection, and even pre-prepared labels for the bags! Now Tracey just needs to sharpen her elbows to fight her way through the crowds to make sure we get the ones we want!

Clay Oven - Mark 2

Well - here goes. Today we made a start on our new clay oven. You may remember that we built one last year with a wooden base... which turned out to be a bad idea, as it burned rather too easily, and we ended up with a heap of charred wood and a pile of cracked clay. 

So today, with a new brick-built plinth, we made a new one. Thanks to Carrington Pottery, we had a big free bucket of dry clay to use in making a new oven, and of course we also had the remains of the old clay oven to recycle. Framework's Gateway to Nature group came to give us a hand, which helped the work to go faster and meant everyone had a chance to get really muddy!

Here's our how to do it guide, a second time with a few modifications.

First, we lined the base of the oven with sand. We actually put in a layer of vermiculite first to help with heat retention in the oven floor, then the sand. After that we put in a brick floor for the oven on top of this, and leveled it, using sand in the gaps to stabilise the bricks. 

Putting in the bed of sand and bricks for the oven base

Meanwhile, the rest of the Framework gang were hard at work crushing the dry clay so we could mix it easily with the sand.

Pulverising the dry clay

Sieving the bashed clay.

Then we needed to tread water into the clay. This is very very messy! On the plus side, it leaves you with lovely smooth feet... You need the resulting mix to be about 50:50 clay and sand, with enough water to hold it together in a firm mix that is still pliable enough to mould into shape. The test is that a ball of the mix, when dropped from shoulder height, will still retain its shape. It's best to mix it on a tarpaulin or on strong plastic (we have lots of off-cuts, after the polytunnel vandalism and recovering last year). As we mixed it, the plastic could be pulled up to easily turn the sides of the mix into the middle, which really helped speed up the process.

Mark from Framework starts mixing water into
the clay using the barefoot technique. It's a bit
like dancing "the twist"...

Regulars Matt and Tracey lend a foot.

Whilst the mortar was being created, we used damp sand to create a dome. This was the mould and showed us how big the internal dimensions of the oven would be. We initially decided how high the oven would be based on how wide we wanted it to be, drawing a circle (with a pen on a string) to mark where it would go. Then using the radius of the circle as the height, we marked this on a stick that we pushed into the centre of the mound to show how high to make it. We also made a template in cardboard to show a quarter arc of the circle and used that in the last stages to create a perfect hemisphere. We had to firm it well so it would keep its shape when we then covered it in clay. We also covered it in aluminium foil so that we didn't end up with an oven that kept shedding sand into the food. We could have used newspaper, but we didn't have any to hand!

The finished sand dome - ready to be wrapped to act as the
internal mould for the oven

The dome covered in foil

We started building up the oven from the base, aiming for about 4-5cm thick walls. We found that putting "guide lumps" of clay of the appropriate thickness against our work tended to help, as it's natural to start to thin the clay as you push and smooth it into place. A lump of clay sticking out shows you how thick it needs to be. 

Once the dome of clay was completed, we slapped it all over to ensure all the clay was firmly bedded in, and then we cut out the door using a sharp knife and removed it. The foil helped here, as you can hear the knife touching it, so you know if you've carved deeply enough into the clay. Apparently height at the top of the curve for this should be 63% of the internal height of the oven. Not sure who decided that, but we hope they are right! The other thing to think of at this stage is making the width of the door big enough to take a baking tray. We made sure there was plenty of room for the one we've got, so that should avoid any embarrassment later on...

The next stage is to wait. The clay needs some time to dry out and harden, so that the oven doesn't collapse or deform when the sand is removed. Hopefully we'll be able to scoop out the sand tomorrow.

Mia helps Dad weed the onion bed.

 Thanks to the Framework folk - you did a great job and saved us hours of work. You've also left us with some beautifully re-painted totem poles, so thank you to the artists as well. And thanks to Mia for helping Dad Mark to weed the onion beds - she's definitely shaping up to be a master gardener when she grows up.

Meet the artists!

Stylish wellies!

Giving our first totem pole a revamp

And We're Back - at the Cutting Edge!

So, after a few holidays we're back and blogging - and there's lots to be done.

The first and most important job is to give the meadow its annual haircut. This is more difficult this year, as all the rain made the plants grow massively tall and woody. We have made the decision to avoid using strimmers and other powered mowers, so we've invested in an Austrian Scythe! Tracey set up the scythe and read up on how to use and sharpen it, and she's gradually working on the rest of the group to have a go (with appropriate safeguards and risk assessments, of course!).

Tracey with the Austrian Scythe

The Austrian scythe is a revelation to anyone who has done any scythe work before. It's very light, the handle is just the right shape and the blade arrives so sharp that you could shave with it. Tracey managed to get over halfway through the meadow in about 40 minutes of work in very thick growth, so she's quite pleased with it. She's also delighted not to have to break her arm starting a strimmer, and is definitely not missing the high pitched whine and stone-spitting problems of the infernal machine.

Meanwhile, the onion harvest has been taking place. The polytunnel looks quite jolly with the white and red onions all drying.

Onion bunting anyone?!

And, in the orchard, the lawn we created is being maintained with a push-powered mower that works wonderfully. Just a whisper of blades and it's done. We like to think that it's as fast as a petrol mower, and it's definitely much quieter and a whole lot less polluting. Mark and Dan have been doing a great job keeping the lawn in trim, in fact they had finished before we got around to taking a picture! However, the sunflowers in the orchard have got huge, so we persuaded Mark to stand next to one for scale.

How tall is it Mark?

Things are hotting up in the polytunnel as well. We now have our Pocket Vine tomatoes starting to ripen. These are absolutely bizarre beasties - they look like lots of small tomatoes glued together. Fortunately they also taste great. Look out for them at some of our events.

It's supposed to look like that! It's a pocket vine tomato