Tracey and I arrived fairly late on Friday night - Tracey had been away on a bush-craft weekend feeding 60 kids pizzas made in a couple of tradition clay ovens. Thankfully this meant we now had an "expert" in our midst. We definitely needed one.
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| the claymakers |
Went for the hammock sleeping arrangement again on account of there being only two of us to crowd the Yardarm. The only problem being that we had left a bucket of stagnant water next to the water butt with clay in the bottom and a thousand or more midges had decided to all hatch at the same time - by morning I had been eaten alive and was in a bit of a state. So much so that I thought scrubbing the decking at 545am was a good way of taking my mind off the itching!
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| refreshments on tap are essential |
Simon and Helen arrived around 10am and after the obligatory brew we got cracking on step 1 - digging out and preparing the clay. So far we have learnt that it strengthens your finger muscles, gives you incredibly sore thumbs and destroys at least one fingernail per bucket.
In a trug with water makes it easier, but too wet and it won't puddle into the right consistency, too dry and it takes forever. I have also learnt that with the right friends around you can still guzzle wine despite clay-covered hands. An essential activity when you reach your 5th bucket of clay.
We had two sets of instructions with us, one from River Cottage and the other from some guy who made one in his garden. From the many that I read through on-line, I chose these two as they gave the most detail for each stage. Sadly though, they both had different guidelines for drying times, layer thickness and the ratio of clay to sand. We also had no idea how pure our clay was, coming from the pond area - could it already be 50% sand? Having researched and printed, and even remembered to take with me, both sets of instructions, we failed to read them until after the first disastrous mix. Well, disastrous is a bit harsh, "time-consuming" would be a better description, because we did actually make a fairly decent batch (or "sausage" as we now call them), we just wasted a fair amount of time puddling before we realised we should have added water as well!
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| the splat test |
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| the first time in the puddling pool |
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how it looks after an hour
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| pretending to merge the sausages |
As soon as we thought it might be ready, after about an hour of sterling stomping by Tracey, we performed the splat test - where a tennis ball sized lump of clay is dropped from shoulder height - it should not crack, crumble, or splat. We tended to stop when it was more like a pat that held at least half it's shape and didn't leave bits of itself on the decking when you retrieved it. I suspect this is at the wetter end of the acceptable consistency for oven-making - but it was a balance between ease of making, building and drying time. We settled on a final mix of 1 bucket of gloopy clay and 1 x 20kg bag of builders sand, puddled for about an hour.
Because our first sausage was a different, and somewhat unknown, recipe to the others, we then had to puddle the whole lot (5 sausages) together, well, when I say "we", I mean Helen and Tracey did! Whilst this was going on it was time for me to make the sand dome which we thought wouldn't take long, especially as Flee had kindly made us a template to make life easier. Unfortunately I promptly snapped it in half within minutes of getting started- oops. Turns out though it was actually much easier to use when it only had one side, as trying to turn a 1 metre long template was actually quite tricky in very limited space.
Finally after 3 attempts at building the sand dome on account of not actually having enough sand, and having to remake with firebricks, then remake again with firebricks
and ballast, we eventually got it successfully finished with some emergency sand, sieved from ballast using the fire guard from the firepit. Once done, we quickly covered it in wet newspaper. I was frantic, hot, tired, itchy and achy - working in such a cramped space with no head room was tricky to say the least especially when the sand kept drying out and collapsing. Grrrrrr.
Next comes the brick-making. Tip number 1: don't leave the lovingly crafted brick moulds at home when you intend to make bricks. Flee kindly knocked up another set on site - always quicker second time round eh Flee?
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| Tracey looking unimpressed with the brick-making task! |
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| cutting the door out - for the much needed clay |
This earned Flee the role of foreman for the remainder of the day and proceeded to work us all at typical "Flee-speed". Which was exactly what was needed as we were seriously in danger of running out of weekend. The sand dome was made and wouldn't last another week. So the ladies made bricks and Flee ran them back and forth to me in the Yardarm as the squat brickie, merging them together on the dome. This went on for hours, or so it seemed. Despite everything aching and every muscle in my body screaming at me to stop, the build was going well. We couldn't really stop until the first layer was on the dome. It was recommended that it was 10cm thick, so we had brick moulds that were 5cm and the plan was to double up to reduce the risk of gaps. This would have worked fine had we not had a severe sausage shortage half way through and realised the second round could only be 1cm thick; lots of sweating, smearing and swearing ensued but we eventually got almost to the top on the second round when we realised even a 1cm thick layer was too much and the clay ran out. Thankfully everyone else kept their cool whilst I was flapping about like a headless chicken of course. We only needed a small amount to finish and so after some debate, we decided to cut out the door and wedge a log in the gap so we could use the cut-out clay to finish the dome. A reasonable decision - and our only option, it seemed, given the daylight we had left. Timelapse to follow - it's a bit of a beast.
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| The face of elation! |
Outstanding job team - if only we had a hot shower to get cleaned up for dinner.... oh no wait.... Simon had been busy all day long ensuring we could do exactly that! Our new rainforest bucket shower is quite simply a pleasure no-one should ever be deprived of. But more on that later... there was chilli on the fire and a team of shattered clay-makers to chill out with. (and the blogger needs more time to write!).
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| finally we get to eat - chilli all round. |
Over the past couple of years we've come up with all sorts of ideas about a shower at the woods and had pretty much settled on the bucket shower - the kind used in safari tents across Africa. A very simple arrangement with a bucket full of warm water suspended above your head with some kind of tap to turn the water on and off. Perfect for "navvie" showers where you can get wet, turn it off, lather up, turn it back on and rinse.
