A New Oven

Once we were established at our new site south of town, we collected silty clay from the parking area near the dry lake bed.

We collected about 5, five gallon buckets full and hauled it back to our camp site.

I decided the old fire pit would make a good base for a new oven, so I leveled the sand and laid in some recycled wine bottles for insulation.




The bottles were covered with sand which I leveled before placing the fire brick.

In the mean time, Marlene was checking her bread dough by making pita in a pan on the gas stove.

The bread dough is good and the pita turned out tasty.

The next morning I dug up sand from the desert outside our door, moisted it, and built the inner sand mold.

I had help mixing the mud. Odel added the water and I did the dance. Later, Laurie took over the dance duties.

Pretty soon, Earl showed up and after showing them the basics of placing clay around the sand form, they took over the project.

They did an excellant job of building the oven shell. Then Lynn took over and added the artistic touch.

After all these people came to help (it's amazing how many people have never read "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", I was able to take a break and watch the action.

The oven turned out to be a work of art thanks to all the help. The good news is that from fire brick base to finished oven took only one afternoon.