Moving into fall with a full garden

We had pre-Thanksgiving houseguests this last weekend. It was so rewarding to us to be able to walk into the garden and harvest food to feed them. Lettuce and cucumbers went into salads. Basil and oregano went into pizza, along with stored garlic and preserved tomatoes. Fresh rosemary, frozen carrots, stored onions and garlic went into the crockpot for Flemish Stew and a whole chicken. We didn’t get to it, but we could have cooked up peppers, green beans and/or edamame. What a joy this garden brings to our lives.

Soy beans on the left, bush beans on the right, pole beans in back.

The monarchs are still flitting around the butterfly weeds. Those, along with zinnias, marigolds, and pansies are still blooming away. The first freeze should put a stop to that in the next couple of weeks.

I also thought I would mention that there aren’t any monthly planting lists for November, December, or January. It’s time to relax and feast on the bounty. Aside from winter cleanup and hoarding leaves for compost, your garden chores should revolve around dreaming about next year’s plans. February will be here before you know it, and you’ll have to hop to it!

I make butter

OK, yes, I made butter. It just sounds better to say “I make butter”, like I’m accomplished at yet another task. And after I made goat cheese, I went on to make it many more times, so let’s hope this sticks, too.

For months, we’ve been getting raw goat milk from our friendly, (sort of) neighborhood organic rancher. Hence the goat cheese. Now we’ve lucked upon a source for raw cow milk, too! (Sorry, can’t share. But if/when I can, I will.) This is all very funny, for a family that has for years avoided most milk products like the plague. Both Jan and I have different problems with milk, physically. But I’m here to tell you that the raw milk isn’t affecting us the way that store-bought milk does. It’s hard to say what all is involved in our normal difficulty with milk, because in addition to being raw, the milk we’re using now also comes from healthy, grass-fed animals. No hormones and antibiotics. No need to super-heat the milk to neutralize the nasty bacteria and strain out the pus. Oh yes. That’s store-bought milk for you. Even most organic cattle heards are fed corn and kept in nasty, crowded conditions; and of course the milk is pasteurized and homogenized.

But what I have on my hands is the good stuff. The cream rises to the top of the cow milk, begging to be siphoned off and used to make butter (goat milk is naturally homogenized, btw). So I did. Despite Jan’s desire to buy a churn, I knew I could do the job with a mason jar.  So I took my turkey baster, siphoned off about 2 cups of cream, and got to shaking.

Butter-making, like so many household food and gardening adventures, is an act of faith. You have to believe that this will eventually work. Otherwise, you would feel like a total ass walking around the house in circles shaking, shaking, shaking your jar. I’m here to cheer you on.

First, you’ll see the cream start to foam:

Then, the curds will start to form, in little, pale yellow clumps:

I shook it for just a bit longer, until it looked like mostly clumps with just a bit of buttermilk. Then strain out the clumps, and keep that buttermilk!

Take the back of a big spoon and press the butter against the sides of a bowl. You’re trying to squeeze out as much of the buttermilk as possible. Fold and press. Add a little cold water. Fold and press. Add a little cold water. Fold and press. Until the water runs clear. Then we mixed in a little salt.

Voila! Butter:

Now, if your family is anything like mine, a hunk of butter this size is about enough for one round of toast. That’s the rub. It’s divine, but fleeting. The only way I can imagine making enough butter to get us through a week is if we could buy straight-up cream, without the milk. Which is possible, since many of the milk-buyers out there want skimmed milk. I can’t fathom that. But it’s true.

And with the buttermilk, Ella and I make pancakes:

I took a picture of these particular buttermilk pancakes because this was a monumental step in Ella’s cooking career. She not only helped me mix the batter. She poured, evaluated, and flipped the pancakes, then took them off the griddle onto the plate. Without major injuries. I’m so proud. Soon, I’ll have two cooks in the house, and I can relax. If only I could get them to respond to a little bell.

Brick oven + Hard Work = Fun

Cheddar & Chive, 11 Grain Wheat, and Rye breads.

I’ll bet you’re wondering if we’re using the brick oven that Jan spent 6 months building, huh? Yup. Every single week. Honestly, I’m amazed. I thought the hard work was over when Jan finished the masonry. But he’s now making about 20 pounds of dough per week, between the pizza dough and bread dough. It’s usually a 2 day process, which takes up the vast majority of his time off from work. I’m in awe of his energy for this. Although I will say that both of us have been really happy with the way it’s brought our friends and neighbors even closer together. Jan fires up the oven for pizza on the first night, then fires it for bread the next day. It’s not unusual for someone to come over with a pizza or loaf ready to pop in the oven and take home. At the very least, Jan being outside so much makes for an easy target for neighbors dropping by and hanging out.

Preparing the chamber for pizza, by pushing the fire to the edges.

So many people pitched in when Jan was building, and they have all stayed close to reap the rewards. We’re working our way through hosting friends, family, and neighbors (weather permitting) over for pizza. Our house is small, so we can only accommodate about 2 couples at a time (or one family, when they come with lots of kids!). And Jan has been passing out extra loaves of bread each week: french, cheddar & chive, whole wheat, wheat french, 11 grain wheat, and rye so far. The 11 grain is garnering the most attention, but the cheddar & chive is my current favorite. He puts 1.5 potatoes into the dough, then sharp cheddar cheese and chives. There’s also a secret ingredient that I’m not at liberty to discuss, but it brought the bread to a whole new level from one week to the next. Mmmm. Experiment on me, baby!

Brick oven pizza from our own backyard.

This week we even bartered some bread for farm-fresh eggs. This is the life.

Taking it home

Here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

With the outer walls bricked in, Jan had one engineering problem to solve before starting on the domed roof of the oven. He realized that if he built the arches resting on the single-thickness brick walls, the weight of the dome would press the walls outward and the dome would eventually collapse.

After conferring with his father, a former civil engineer, they came up with this strategy:

He poured concrete pillars into the four corners of the outer oven walls. Then he ran rebar around the inner perimeter, and tied it into pillars and brickwork. This keeps the brick walls from splaying outward.

Note the vermiculite insulation which eventually filled all of the space between the outer walls and the oven chamber. This is another contribution from one of our neighbors, who runs a wholesale nursery. This oven is the most collaborative project I’ve ever seen in any neighborhood I’ve ever lived. (Everyone’s trying to guarantee their share of the bread . . . )

After diverting eventual collapse, it was time to install the dome.

Jan built a big semicircular plywood form, and mortared the bricks over that, removing it when they dried.

At the rate of about one row per day, the finished product emerged.

Jan is waiting to close up the back wall of the dome until he’s fired the oven a few times, to make sure all of the moisture has been evaporated from the space. But that’s all that’s left.

Close to 6 months, hundreds of man-hours, and a couple thousand dollars later, we have ourselves and oven, ladies and gentlemen. And a damn fine one.

It just so happened that the day Jan was ready to fire it up was the morning of our first freeze of the winter. How perfect is that? We’re all in awe of this accomplishment, no one more so than Jan! And we are so grateful for the way it has brought our neighborhood together. We are looking forward to many hours sitting around the oven with our friends and family, making pizza and bread and sharing them out.

Bricks for breakfast, bricks for lunch, bricks for dinner

Here are the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

So, everything so far took about three months. Admittedly, the families (read: wives) were growing weary of the missing husbands. But nothing prepared us for the epic slog that would be the Bricking of the Oven. The four sides took two full months. The dome took another two weeks (a later post). The good thing about the process was that it could be done in small increments. So Jan would come home from work, throw on his overalls (yes, he bought overalls), and lay down one row of bricks. I have never seen anyone so diligently devote all of his spare time to one activity. But even he was starting to go a little crazy.

Jan widened the form used for the oven entrance arch, and made the lower arch with it.

During this time, he also extended the oven floor out through the entrance, using fire bricks.

The slot you see is where the coals and ashes will be raked out of the chamber and onto the ground (or into a container).

Once again, the same arch form was used for this upper arch.

As the walls go up, there is an open space being created between the chamber and bricks. This space will eventually be filled with vermiculite. More insulation.

The open space above and between these two arches will remain open as the chimney.

Our neighbor has taken up blacksmithing. For real. He has a coal-fired forge in his back yard. Anyway, he gave Jan some railroad spikes to use as hooks on the sides of the oven. I love these. They’re so pragmatic. And yet, so cool.

I’ll wrap this piece up with a mea culpa. For the most part, I’ve been the staff photographer on this project. So I came out to capture the rising walls. Now, I’m short. Though I’m tall enough that my feet reach the ground, as my (short) grandpa used to say. Anyway, I wanted to get a picture of the space between the chamber and wall. So, being the former-rock climber that I am, I put my foot on something slightly higher than the ground, grabbed the corner brick, and flagged my foot out for counterbalance.

Off pops the brick, pried loose from the still-wet mortar (bottom right). (sigh) I put the brick in Jan’s hand and slunk back inside.

Insulation

Here are the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

With the oven chamber completed, it feels like we’re in the home stretch. Time to add mass to the oven, to retain heat. This thing is going to get crazy hot. Pizzas are cooked at 650-800°. The oven also needs to maintain high temperature for a long time. Bread is cooked around 500°, after the coals are raked out of the oven. Lots of mass and insulation ensure consistent results.

First, Jan built a removable plywood form, into which the concrete would be poured.

Then Ken and Jan wrapped the chamber with tin foil, to shield the bread from cosmic radiation. Actually, it’s to prevent the concrete mass from adhering to the chamber structure. This will allow expansion and contraction in the chamber, without breaking up the concrete layer.

Next they replaced the form, and inserted rebar around the chamber structure.

Please note the stretch of space on the side of the form where there is no 2×4 supporting the plywood. This will become important later.

Next, massive quantities of concrete were mixed and shoveled into the form. When this project started, Jan and Ken were carefully measuring water to add to the concrete mix. By this point, they were mixing their own concrete from scratch, and eyeballing the water from a hose. Skills have been acquired.

Concrete is heavy. Really, really heavy. So as the boys were shoveling, they began to notice that the sides of the plywood form were bowing out. Note to those who come after: reinforce the plywood along the entire length. Otherwise, you’ll need an emergency retrofit:

The good thing is that this will all be covered up by the outer brick-work. So no harm done. The form came off a couple of days later, and our commitment level ratchets up another notch.

Notice the inset wooden form at the top front. That is where the chimney will be.

At this point, Jan and I reflect on permanence and attachment. He told me we could never move now. This is a funny thing to say to me. I have never in my life lived in a house for longer than 4 years. We, as a couple, have moved 6 times into 7 houses in our 9 years together.

“You told me that this oven was built on a floating slab, so that it could be detached from the base and moved,” I say.

“Well yes,” he says, “moved across the yard or something.”

“Across the yard?” I am incredulous. “What the hell good is that? Why can’t we take it with us?”

“This thing weighs as much as a Hummer!”

“I see Hummers moving around all the time.” Too often, if you ask me.

“But they have wheels!” Now he’s incredulous.

“So, get some wheels for this thing. We’ll hitch it to the van.”

If we do end up hitching this thing, I promise I’ll share pictures.

Going up

Here are the first, second, third, and fourth posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu). Man, this is becoming epic. Not just in number of posts, but the families are burnt out! OK, the wives, in particular. Jan works on the oven in most of his spare time, and Lori is close to done with Ken coming over here and leaving her with the three youngins.

Fortunately, the work lately has been very tangible. First, the walls of the chamber, starting with the back:

Then, the side walls and the arch of the chamber ceiling. Jan is really getting a feel for masonry in this project, with the jigs and arches:

Three rows of arch, and a cap stone:

There is so much planning and thought that goes into each stage, before the bricks are cut and installed. One concern Jan had was making a smooth taper to the chamber opening, to facilitate cleaning the ashes out. You can see his solution here:

And from the outside, jigs in place:

Once all mortared together, we undeniably have an oven:

But the best part was when I pulled into the driveway one day and smelled wood smoke. I love that smell, and don’t expect it in the summer, normally. What a treat to see that it was from our oven!

There is still a lot to be done, insulating the chamber, building the chimney, and bricking the outer cladding over the entire structure. But seeing a fire in there bought Jan some patience on the home front.

Chamber Floor

Here are the first, second, and third posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu).

I’m falling behind on my oven posts. Oh, the horror. I’ll try to catch up this weekend.

After completing the floating slab, next comes the oven floor. The entire oven chamber is built of refractory bricks.

This stage of the process was stressful and tedious. Apparently, Jan leveled each brick, one at a time. I suppose you’ll be pretty annoyed with yourself if you build a several-ton structure, and screw up the part of the oven that you interact with the most: the chamber floor. Besides being level and smooth, there aren’t supposed to be any gaps between the perfectly square edges of the bricks. Here you can see the vermiculite/concrete layer, the concrete layer above that, and the refractory brick layer. Like some really heavy cake.

After such a tedious step, you can imagine Jan’s feelings when he checked on the oven the next morning and was able to easily pry loose the bricks from the slab. Argh! After discussing the pros and cons of full disclosure, we decided it was best to share the pitfalls, as well as the successes, of our journey to brick-oven pizza heaven. Lucky you.

Apparently, Jan had used too much mortar. So the bricks didn’t make any contact with the slab. I suppose that’s why tiles and such are applied with wavy-edged trowels, to avoid applying too thick of a layer. Jan has one of those trowels now. Have I mentioned all of the new tools acquired for this project? I don’t think I have. Not only has Jan added all sorts of masonry tools, but he has also “had to” upgrade several of our more general tools, driving up the total cost of this project beyond mere materials costs.

So he pulled the bricks off, scraped the mortar, and started again.

All of this drama really did little to dampen the spirits of the peanut gallery:

This time, Ken was here to help. So the company and inevitable alcohol made the time pass more quickly. Here we go, from the top (er, bottom):

It was a mental threshold, building out part of the actual cooking chamber. I’m starting to think about the plants I will install around the finished oven. That’s definite progress.

I make cheese

OK, I made cheese. Once. And I’m making some right now. If I finish two batches, can I say, “I make cheese”?

Our local rancher, from whom we purchase all of our meat and eggs, also makes raw goat milk. So I drive to Greenville every two weeks to pick it up. (Texas law apparently prohibits them from bringing the raw milk to the farmer’s market, where I could very conveniently acquire it with the rest of my Saturday morning shopping. Grr.)

Ella loves this goat milk. I have to admit, it’s not like any other goat milk I’ve ever come across. It doesn’t have that musky goat-ness. They say they taste the milk every morning, and if it tastes “goat-ish”, they feed it to the pigs.

Ella also loves goat cheese. She has since she was a baby. So Jan ordered me a goat cheese making kit from Nichols Garden Nursery (they have veggie rennet, for the squeamish, like me). So I grabbed a gallon of raw milk, and gave it a go.

It was insanely easy. I just poured a gallon of milk into a pan (I didn’t pasteurize it, per the instructions, as that would defeat the entire purpose of using raw milk), added the chevre culture, and left the curds and whey to separate over ~24 hours. Then I drained the whey, put the curds in a bowl and mixed with salt, poured it into cheesecloth, and hung to drain for ~12 hours.

Voila! Raw, organic cheese. One gallon of milk (grass-fed, free range) made a little over 1.5 lbs of cheese. It’s supposed to last about two weeks in the fridge, and they say you can freeze it.

And it was good! But a little dry. I’m making a half-gallon batch right now, and I plan to drain it for only 6 hours. Ella likes to spread the cheese on toast and sandwiches, so creamy is better. Once I’m happy with the consistency, I’ll start experimenting with additions: herbs, flowers, kosher salt, yum. But of course I’ll have to keep making plain batches, for the kid. She’s not so adventurous with the cheese contaminants.

Floating Slab

Here are the first and second posts in this series.

The most enjoyable part of this budding bread oven so far has been the response from the neighborhood. Everyone is so excited about the prospect of fresh bread and pizza. I am constantly amazed at the emotional connection people have to food. On the one hand, making your own bread is certainly laborious, and most people don’t have time for such a thing in their lives. On the other hand, not many of our daily activities bring so much easy joy to others. It’s sobering to survey our daily activities in that context. What do you do in a day that brings joy to someone in the world. It makes bread baking seem a lot less laborious.

The third phase of the oven project entailed building a floating slab, which will sit under the oven vault. Jan and Ken mixed cement with vermiculite, and filled the form that they created previously.

Clearly, such a delicate task required the supervision of not only our current neighbor, Rick, but our new neighbors, Billy and Mark. They’re building a new house on our old street (totally in keeping with the architectural spirit of the ‘hood, by the way – we’re happy to welcome them into our big, happy, dysfunctional neighborhood family).

Next, they stuck nails into the vermiculite mixture, to stabilize the rebar to be laid on top.

You can’t really tell from the picture, but there are grooves ground out of the concrete blocks where each piece of rebar sits, so it is suspended from the outer frame of the oven. The plywood jig on the right is where the ash drop will be: the ash can be swept out of the oven, straight down onto the ground.

Next, our intrepid heroes built a frame for a concrete slab to be poured directly on top of the vermiculite mixture (here’s the floating part). Notice the beer bottle shoring up the rebar in the front corner. That’s key.

Late into the night (it had to have been 9:00 when I stopped checking on them), they poured concrete into the new form.

Jump forward to the next time I grab my camera, and you’ll see the slab a’floatin’.

I must remind you at this point that I am merely an interested bystander. If you’d like real information about this type of oven, the experts are here:

general information about brick ovens

the directions that Jan is following (basically)