This mornings sunrise resulted in the reflection of pink off the clouds over the village of Borrego Springs. This looked to be a good day to work on rebuilding the old oven. I had already gathered the clay from the lake bed and found straw, which was actually some sort of dried desert plant that had blown up against a row of trees along the road.
I added water and started mixing the clay. This is the hard part. It's like trying to run in place only each time your foot hits the ground it sticks.
When the mixture reached the right consitency, I added the broken up sage plant material.
I carried the material to the oven while Marlene placed it and packed it around the remains of the old oven.
This time we got the consistancy of the the clay just rigtht. It was really stiff and when we packed it in place it didn't slump and get thicker at the bottem like it had while building previous ovens.
Marlene was doing a good job of getting a full 4 to 5 inches of new clay over the top of the old oven.
We're really proud of the way this repair turned out. Note the use of Marlene's quilt cutting board as a form to hold the clay around the oven door.
Now all we need are a couple of good drying days, a fire for three hours, and some fresh bread dough and we're back in business. It's about time. We are running short of fresh bread and we have'nt had any pizza since we left Quartzsite.
No comments:
Post a Comment