Pizza Oven

This is a dead easy and cheap oven to build. Forget the fancy kits and complicated plans, this uses a home made adobe mixture and second hand materials.

1. Theoretically you could build this on the ground, but for ease of use, we raise them about 50cm off the ground. To do so, place 4 - 6 pillars to support a metal frame.

2. Maybe over engineering but the ghost of my father made me
put star pickets through these besser blocks then fill them with concrete.

 3. You need a metal frame to hold the oven up. We found a grate at a wreckers yard but a gate or old shed door frame would do.

 4. Lay cement sheet over the frame.

5. Lay floor bricks. These are regular house bricks. Don't bother sourcing firebricks. They are expensive and unnecessary. House bricks are dense and will hold the heat, which is what you want. (firebricks will reflect the heat and can be quite crumbly). Lay them with the flat side up to make for a smooth floor.
You probably don't need to, but I lay them on a mortar bed.

 6. The oven mouth. This is the trickiest bit but it is not really. Make a form in the shape of an arch. I prefer low and wide so not too much heat escapes but you have good shovel access when cooking. Start on the outside and build your arch up. You can use precast arch bricks or cut them but I just use straight bricks with mortar.

7. You can see here the only shaped brick is the keystone. I just chipped this to fit the gap.

 8. Now you are ready to build the dome. Make a big sand castle in the shape you want. The highest point of the dome should be above the mouth arch. When its good, cover with plastic to stop the adobe mix from sticking.

 9. Mixing the castable adobe. You can buy castable refractory material, but it costs. A mechanical mixer would be neat but I just use a barrow and shovel

My mix is this (roughly)
4 parts sand
3 parts refractory gravel (ie. granite or scoria, not Bluemetal)
4 parts clay (fireclay is probably best but I use recycled school kids      projects, you could use any clay you can find)
2 parts straw and/or sawdust
1 1/2 parts cement

10. The thickness of the adobe should be about the thickness of a brick or thicker. A thick layer is better than lots of thin layers.

11. You can see here the inclusion of a flue. This needs to be at the front, close to the door, (for reasons explained later).

12. I usually put a layer on the outside that has a bit more cement in it. This helps weather proof. Keep in mind that the laws of thermodynamics mean that the whole unit will expand on heating. Some cracking is inevitable and normal.




The Diagram below explains the theory behind the oven. You light a fire in it about 2 -3 hours before cooking. just before cooking, you push the fire back with a rake. The floor can be brushed clean with a damp brush on a stick. The idea is then that while you cook, the heat travels up and forward, the smoke going up the flue rather than in your eyes. With a hardwood fire and good coals you should have about 2 hours cooking time.

Spring Garden

Spring Garden with transplants foundlings and resurrections, note Greenhouse behind.

Note raised Veggie Beds beyond

Floor it

You may recall previous references to the hideous salmon pink ceramic tiles. Our plan was to cover these with rubber or vinyl but, after laying this 'Ardex K15' floor levelling compound, we are thinking to simply seal this with epoxy and leave it. Looking more minimal already, and such a relief to not have to look at the tiles.

Check it out!! K15 plus two coats of sealer and we are in hipster heaven. Tiles begone!

Veggie Beds

Using the carpet we ripped out of the House to line the boxes, we set about preparing our 'No Dig' garden.

To raise the level up, we chucked in some hay bales.

Then newspaper, sugarcane mulch, compost, chicken manure & lime in repeating layers until the level comes close to the top of the box.

After watering its ready for planting.

Shroom Season

One of the joys of this time of the year in the Marsh, apart from warm fires and dark ale, is the Plethora of fungi. No where else have we seen such a huge variety of freaky shapes and colours in these strange creatures from the dark side.

I am sure, to the knowledgeable and the appreciative, these would provide a trove of culinary delights. Unfortunately Lily and I agree on this one culinary fact, mushrooms taste like death. Coupled with the fact that some of them can actually kill you, we content ourselves with looking. For an awesome literary investigation of the magic and symbolism of mushrooms try Gunter Grass' 'The Flounder'

Nectar

In november last year we resurrected my lifelong dream to be a bee man. Building on some misdirected adventures with bees back in my twenties, I read some more books and bought two hives from Colin at Corio. Since then we have collected a swarm from Bob & Jeannie's in Barwon Heads (not as scary as it sounds).

"Smoke em if you've got em" Bob says. So he is.

Bob and Me cracking the seal on a hive.

Bob checking a frame of honey stores. 2/3 eaten as it is winter and the girls are living on rations.

A few jars harvest in late Summer this year. At present the girls (150,000 or so) are living on stores gathered in better weather. Hopefully another harvest at the end of Spring after some warm weather and blossom.

Another pastime resurrected from my twenties, thanks to our lovely daughter Rose by way of a xmas present in kit form, beer making. The two activities go nicely, as a bit of honey finds its way into brews. Pictured are a dark ale "Pelt", "Honey Wheat" & "Riddell's Creek Massacre" - a dark ale infused with Shiraz.

Cold out, stay in and paint

Shocking weather, cold and wet. So the past week has seen us inside by the fire, oil paint fumes notwithstanding, having fun. Inspired by the Cloud Appreciation Society, I have been painting clouds. See below Cumulo-Nimbus over Whoorel, Cumulo-stratos over Mt. Gellibrand, Bulbous Cumulo over Wendsleydale and others. Lily has been looking at creepy tiny worlds under glass.

Not an Island

Ghastly right? The damn pine panelling adorns every surface in the kitchen, including the hideous bench (pictured here with the saloon stools awaiting the howdys). But for the undeniable functional ease that an island bench brings, we would have knocked this bastard down for a start. Coming to terms with the necessity of bench space, we embarked on a quest to come up with an answer. How to have a bench, indeed a kitchen, that was at once functional and aesthetically okay. I guess this is a pretty common journey but one which, by the looks of the images on the internet, often ends in failure if not heartbreak. We had toyed with concrete benchtop, a company called Concrete Blonde do incredibly sexy patinations. We even considered some kind of faux stone which I could never quite deal with at a gut level. At one point we thought we had found the solution in a piece by Gitta Gschwendtner that really pushes the boundaries of outlandish functionality. "Why not make it a sculpture" came the not unfamiliar refrain from my beautiful wife.

We decided however that our space was not big enough to accomodate such a statement. The perennial question also raised its head, we have no money. We started looking at what we could do with the existing structure and cupboards and had a fun 24 hours brainstorming different solutions. We figured if we pulled out the beading and covered the bevelled panels, the existing structure could work. Pegboard was a front runner for a while, and we considered all things from collage to metal.
In the end, this assemblage/painting by Rosalie Gasgoigne provided the inspiration.

Several sheets of ply later, and some nips and tucks with the circular saw, this is the result. As for the top, we kept thinking stainless steel. Despite the nay sayers, I have always hankered for this easy wipedown slick surface. Again, money remained an issue until a neighbour said, "go see Rob in Colac". We did and he whipped up this top in a few days at a price that was unbeleivable. Almost incredibly, the top slipped on like a glove having been expertly made from my crappy drawings.