This week, I remembered our nearly finished outdoor oven is almost useless without a certain few tools. Unlike a conventional oven, you don’t just pop open the door, throw on an oven mitt or two, and take out your food. The best and most exciting part of baking in a cob oven is sliiiiding pizza and bread in and out with a pizza peel, a long handled paddle for transferring food in and out without burning your fingertips off in a 800°+ cooking environment. So I decided to take a couple hours to make a wooden pizza peel with a piece of oak I had sighted earlier for the purpose. Here’s how I made it.
Recently, one of the timber frame participants wisely said: ‘if some one offers you a drill, take it.’ I think this quote has wide application, and plan on remembering it. Our instructor Tom Cundiff says he prefers to teach students with minimal or no experience with working wood or timber framing. In his view, those individuals are more open to being taught and absorbing new information. If some one already thinks they have the answer, it can be harder to teach something new or different.
The students this year are doing a great job thus far. Most have had zero or little timber framing & carpentry experience, but it’s amazing how quickly people catch on in a workshop setting. It’s really fun to witness that. The sponge effect is definitely happening. It’s also interesting to see the evolution of understanding — how experiencing different parts of the timber framing procedure gradually create a more fully formed image and understanding. All of a sudden you’ll see that “a-ha!” moment. I know I’ve felt that myself, too.
Our batch of students for the 2013 Timber Frame Workshop arrive this afternoon, and we are in that interesting moment in time right before a lot of activity, anticipating, getting the last few things in order, and looking forward to the 10 days ahead. This year’s workshop feels vastly different than last, since April and I (a.k.a., The Year of Mud) are acting as hosts and organizers, or masters of ceremonies. We’ll be ducking in and out of the class itself, too, but the labor is much more evenly distributed this year, which is really nice.
Anyway, we love hosting workshops and meeting new people, and reveling in the excitement that is part of participating with a group of people on a project in an organized way. These workshops are like an extension of community, although temporary. But a sure sign of success, despite how temporary and brief these workshops ultimately are, is maintaining contact with former participants.
Well, look forward to updates throughout the week! We’ll make daily updates on The Year of Mud on facebook, too.
It’s been several years since we have been without an outdoor cob oven at our disposal, and I have dearly missed having it around! The original “$20 pizza oven” that we built back in 2009 had to be “moved” since it was in the way of drainage work that needed addressing around Gobcobatron.
But at last, the time has come. In the coming week or two, we intend to build another outdoor pizza oven, better than the last. The time, we have a proper shelter to shield it against the elements (see above!), and we’ll be making several other modifications for creating a lean, mean pizza baking machine. Er… it’s actually kinda big, and distinctly un-machine like, but whatever.
There is now a petition online at Change.org that has been organized to try to grant Charlie and his family retrospective planning permission for their stunning roundhouse in Wales.
Click here to sign the petition. In barely 24 hours, the petition already has nearly 15,000 signatures! Wow. Here’s a big thanks to Natural Homes for putting all that effort into helping this young couple.
Is there still hope? We’ll see… I sure hope so.
Today, justice has gone unserved. Photos and stories of Charlie’s roundhouse have been circulating the web for the past several months, especially when it was announced that Charlie and his family might have to demolish their incredible and artful home, since the house was deemed “harm[ful] to the character and appearance of the countryside” by Pembrokeshire County Council planners.