Coming home from a trip to Flagstaff to celebrate Linc’s mother’s 90th birthday, we car camped by Comb Ridge, near the town of Bluff, Utah, and hiked to a couple of beautiful petro glyph panels near the San Juan River. These ancient people lived in some beautiful spots.
Like this one, in Canyons of the Ancients National Monument, one of dozens of ruins we walked past on a nice six mile loop hike.
Continuing towards home, we car camped near Telluride, and hiked up to an old, mostly abandoned mining town near Alta Lakes. I think that is Mount Wilson and Lizard Head in the background.
Back home, the first layer of cob had dried enough on the oven that we could open the door and scoop out the sand form.
Leaving behind a thin layer of newspaper that we’d placed over the sand so that the cob wouldn’t stick to the sand mound. This burned off during the first firing of the oven.
Wait, gotta put in a gratuitous poultry photo. Here’s the proud papa, Brownie, with his wonderful hen, Chanterelle the Chanticler, and the six chicks she brooded, hatched and raised, teaching them all about the ways of finding food on the farm.
Here, we’ve added a three inch insulating layer of high-straw-content cob to the oven.
And followed that up with a finish coat of plaster. Done! When can we start cooking pizzas in this thing? Well, it took a good week to get dry enough to do that. Good thing we live in a dry climate!
Linc’s college buddy, Rob, showed up on a motorcycle with sleeping bag, clothes, laptop computer and a guitar even, for a visit. Eggplant’s kids really liked him (OK, Eggplant’s kids really like everybody, but it’s a good photo). We had a little neighborhood get together while Rob was here with a potluck dinner and a music circle afterwards. Fun time for everyone.
Jeanne and I get out every few days for a run, hike, or bike ride. This time, we drove up the road a few miles and biked along the Overland Canal in the Aspens. We had a nice ride and harvested lots of stinging nettle, dandelion and plantain to take down and dry at the farm for winter teas and soups. Also discovered a nice patch of Osha to come back to in the fall for the winter roots, great immune system boosters.
The greenhouse roof comes in handy as a place to dry yellow squash and zucchini for winter soups. When not using the space under the polycarbonate clear panels for drying racks, the white rigid board insulation panels (covered with aluminum foil on the side facing the sun) can be slid down to either block the sun in the summer, or trap the heat in on winter nights. This greenhouse is turning out to be a nice, multifunctional addition to our little cabin.
The garden in August. Lots of summer squash and zucchini, bolting lettuce and spinach and mustards, plenty of kale and chard, strawberries, beets, a few early dug potatoes, 150 garlic bulbs, lots of basil, beans, tomatoes, cucumbers.
No comments:
Post a Comment