Building With Earth!

So if you have spent any time around Mike and I you have heard about earthen ovens and cob houses. Here are a few pictures of our first solo attempt of building with earth. The material is sand, clay, and soil with insulating layers that also include wood chips, sawdust, and straw. The first picture is of the brick arch and the soil form that we built on top of. The second is after the dense layer (or heat holding layer) has been formed. We have to do two more layers tommorow and then will post pictures of the finished project and our first baking.

Amara helps us build...man it is hard to keep this child from eating stuff!

And the close up!

Ice Cream

Amara enjoying her first ice cream cone!

Summer seems to be in full swing here at the old water gap. The quiet pace of the winter began to quicken in May when we hosted the SCA's national crew leader training. Mike coordinated the trail work projects and other logistical details while I cooked for the 30-60 folks we had staying in camp for 12 days. Stephen and Jodi as well as our friend Lindsay from Cali came to help me in the kitchen. The training went very smoothly, especially with the help of Grandma Patty, Auntie Kimmy, and Kaylee Rose babysitting over the busy weekend. Our group of 25 summer interns and their leaders come in about three weeks and we simultaneously host another big training for the SCA. Things are definitely about to get crazy around here.

We went to Washington DC with Stephen and Jodi this week and had a great time. We treated ourselves to a nice hotel room close to the mall and spent three days at the monuments, museums, and hanging at the Prez's house. Amara had a great time being packed around on Daddy's shoulders, checking out trees, buses, and statues in the art museum. We all had a fun, but tiring few days.

Mike and I finished planting the garden in camp today. The garden has been a huge group effort by everyone living in camp. From building the raised beds with logs hauled out of the woods, to shoveling soil, manure, and compost, to digging post holes for the fence, to starting seeds and transplanting the seedlings, to weeding and mulching. We have had several set backs to getting plants in the ground. First a mouse munched on all our seedlings while we were out of town, then when we restarted many of the seeds were eaten before they even sprouted. We finally got most of our seedlings growing, then supplemented with some purchased plants, and put them in the ground around May 15th. Well what do you know we had a frost (about 28 degrees) on May 20th and lost all of our tomatoes and the peppers and basil are struggling to recover. We are hoping to be over the hump now and are awaiting our first harvest of delicious vegetables. Right next to the garden is the start of our earthen oven. All having been working on hauling rock and soil and building a foundation. Mike made some test bricks today and we hope to begin construction of our insulating layer tomorrow. If all goes well we will have fresh baked bread out of a clay oven in a few short weeks.

Amara has certainly been growing by leaps and bounds. It is bittersweet to see her get bigger; watching her change and learn and discover is so exciting, but it all happens so fast you barely have time to enjoy all the little moments. She is so much fun to play with and she is beginning to recognize objects and remember songs and words. Physically she is strong and determined, she can pull herself onto just about anything and has stood all by herself for several seconds at a time. She can reach more than we expected and we have had to rearrange a lot of furniture and even the plates in the kitchen after she discovered she could pull those down off the shelf. We know it won't be long know until she is walking and we have to chase her all over the house.

A hand-me-down hairband from Kaylee Rose, it is so sparkly we couldn't help but put it on and giggle.

It's Been Too Long...

Since we have posted. The pace of life has certainly picked up since this winter leaving a little less time for keeping up with the blog. Amara has changed so much in the past month it is unbelieveable! Her crawling has improved by leaps and bounds, she is quite fast and is getting up on her knees (rather than just army man crawling) more often. She has learned to push herself up to a sit as well as return to the ground without keeling over and banging her head. She has been very interested in standing and in the past week as been practicing pulling up on objects around the house. Yesterday she pulled up to stand on the coffee table all by herself and has repeated it a few times. Today she learned to sit back down gently even though we have had some pretty tough falls and a lot of crying. Amara's second little tooth poked through this week, they are very sharp and she bits hard when you try to pull the stick or rock or other random item she is chewing out of her mouth. She is also vocalizing all the time, Doggie (sounds like daw-ee) is officially her first word and she gets so excited to say it when she sees the dogs.

The garden is coming along, we have all of our seeds started, actually have started multiple times since a stupid mouse keeps eating all of our seeds. The raised beds have been built and now we just need to put up a fence to keep the deer out. We wanted to plant this weekend but it rained so much we will be postponed at least another week. We are waiting on some tempeh culture we just ordered and have built an incubator out of an old refrigerator so we will share the story of that adventure once we make our first batch. The beer brewing is coming along with mixed results, mostly mediocre batches and only one really good one, we are learning though. We also made our first batch of soap last week and it is currently curing, it takes at least three weeks to complete the chemical reactions between the fat and the lye so if you use it too soon it is very irritating.

Noborigama Wood Fire

I love throwing pots. I know some folks out there may not be privy to the phrase; and probably have images of Erin and me throwing spaghetti against the wall. And as much as we are an odd couple, what I'm really talking about is pottery. I'm not really embarrassed to use the utilitarian or craft-culture term: "pottery"; rather than the bourgeois, "ceramics." Don’t get me wrong, society needs artists. And I would even go on to say that society needs art where the pieces go beyond form meeting function. But I digress…

Anyways, at this point I feel comfortable saying that I am a potter. This is one of the few creative outlets in my life for which I have developed a deep passion. And this past weekend was a great addition in my experience as a potter: a wood firing. I’ll give the briefest concepts of throwing pots that I can to give some background.

Ok. So, you’re probably familiar with the part where a clay pot is thrown on a wheel, sculpted with tools, or assembled with clay slabs. Once a pot is finished and dry it is called greenware; at this point it is fired (or heated) to a little over 1000 degrees in a kiln. Then it is decorated and glazed with a kind of wet clay/mineral based paint. At this point it can go through its final firing in a variety of ways: in an electric kiln, a gas kiln, or wood kiln. There are so many variables that can create different effects based on type of kiln, temperature, glazes, methods of firing, blah-blah.









This weekend was the first time I have fired in a large wood fired kiln, called a Noborigama Kiln. This type of kiln is based around a type of kiln called an Anagama which is one of the oldest wood-fired kilns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anagama

The basic concept is that there are three chambers: the first one for a huge, hot wood fire; the second and third chambers hold the pots and get a smaller wood fire. And the third one also gets a bunch salt blown into it for different effect on the pots. So the temperature get above 2400 degrees F, ash showers down on the pots, and the glazes/ash/salt turn to glass.






All of this is done over a 2-day period of time. I partnered with another classmate to work the primary firing session from midnight to 6:00 am. We drank homebrew, played guitar, threw more pots, and kept the fire going.




A week after getting the kiln up to temp, we got to unload the kiln and see our pots. One of my favorite things about this style of firing is that it is so organic and uncontrollable. You are feeding the fire god and she returns with a gift; but you never know what that gift might be. So, here are some pictures of the gifts I received.

And some spring mushrooms, and salamander.

Getting Outside!

The weather has been pretty great this past week. We are sad to see the winter go so soon but the warm temperatures have started the blood flowing. Amara went on her first long hike (about 8 miles) and faired pretty well hanging out in the carrier for 5 hours. We love the new carrier we bought, it is an Ergo and is designed really well. It is way more comfortable than any of the other slings or carriers for the long haul. Oh and yes we are teaching her to climb (I mean hug) trees already.



The crawling just keeps getting better everyday. Although she is not quite up on her knees all the way she is super fast, especially when she sees something she wants. We sure have to keep a closer eye on her now and we are baby proofing as she discovers things we don't want her to touch/eat/break. She and I are taking a mommy and me yoga class on Fridays and having a great time with all the other babies and mommies. Though it is not the most relaxing yoga class I have ever taken it is great to get out together and be active. We have also started going to playdates on Mondays with a few moms and babies we met at the Holistic Moms Network meetings we have been going to.

Amara started eating solids about a week ago and boy does she love to eat. It is recommended you only give food once a day this young but we can not sit and eat without giving her something or she FREAKS out. We have been using the Baby Led Weaning (warning lots of breastfeeding pics on this site) method of introducing solids, so far it has been working great. Basically you start with finger foods right away, no purees or rice cereal. So we cut things into sticks that Amara can hold on to and she just gums it all up.



The beer brewing has been going well with one failure (we knew it wasn't going to be good so we were not too dissapointed) and one great success. Our third batch is an American Lager and will be ready to bottle in another week or so. Our next project is soapmaking. We gathered all the supplies this week and will hopefully get time next week to whip up a batch.

Boot Scoot Boogie

Baby and Beer (Sometimes a good combination)

Amara is awesome!!! It's true. And now she's exceeding just 'big baby' proportions. She's the Hulk: she develops and gets bigger before your eyes. She is definitely growing into a goofy, playful personality; she's inquisitive and likes to 'army-man crawl' towards mischief. There's lots of da-da-da-da and ma-ma-ma-ma, and sometimes it seems like she is actually differentiating between Erin and I.







Beer Brewing Day:
-Bottled an India Pale Ale
-Brewed a Dark American Lager