Llopis oven-building -- Day Three

Oven at around 10 a.m.

Oven at around 11:30 a.m.

Llopis oven-building -- Day Two, Part two

Paola, a kind neighbor who's been helping us out on the cob house recently. She's on the oven this week, partly because we really need the help and partly because she's Columbian and can speak easily to the two Spanish oven-builders (Francisco is pictured here.)

Juan, the other builder.

Oh my God, they just keep coming....

Another photo of celosia; I love this plant. It's my first time growing it or even seeing it.
Not the best picture, but this is Orange Prince, almost identical to Zulu Prince except its color.
Gaillardia, or blanket flower. This one also grows at Green Gulch.
Cleome. Still don't know how to pronounce that word. The flowers are pretty cool, and the stems are beautiful, but very thorny -- worse than roses. Not the best cut flower for that reason. Again, it's the first time I've ever grown or even seen this plant. We only have a few of them in the garden, because the seed I had was really old.
Sun chokes, or Jerusalem artichokes. I grew this on the farm in Woodside last year. It's a close relative of the sunflower, and does have pretty flowers. We grew it this year for three reasons: 1) for the flowers, 2) for its tubers, which are quite yummy, and 3) we planted it in a parabola enclosing the top of the garden (which is on a slope), so that cold air would be diverted away from the majority of the garden. The only problem is that the plants only get tall now, and we needed tall, leafy plants in May, when it was pretty cold and frosty.

And more flowers....

A type of Zinnia called "Persian Carpet." There are so many color patterns in this one variety, which makes them a great cut flower. I don't like zinnias much, but I love these.
Bank of sunflowers....
Another color of statice. Statice also make good dried cut flowers, which is important because at some point we will run out of fresh ones and could start selling dried ones to the CSA. We're trying out different flowers, like celosia and marigold, as dried flowers -- cutting, bundling and hanging them, and seeing whether they'll dry well or whether all they're petals fall off.
This is one of the few medicinal herbs we're growing this year: yerba mansa, which normally grows around hot springs, and needs lots of water. The root is used for medicine; don't ask me what it's used for. It's hard for me to remember.
Safflower, on it's way to drying up....

A beautiful butterfly

Dunno what butterfly or moth this is; it's feeding on a type of pincushion flower (scabiosa) called "starflower everlasting," which is great because it has pretty flowers and interesting seed-heads, both of which are good as cut-flowers. You can see both flowers and seed-heads real well in the last photo.

More gaw-jus flora

Some kind of sunflower; my mum liked this variety best. I like it too.
Sweet William, one of my favorites from the Green Gulch garden. Of all the seedlings we planted, this was the only plant that actually flowered, for some weird reason; we have lots of sweet williams growing beautiful, healthy leaves, but this is the only one that sent out stalks. If anyone has an idea why this is so, please comment.
Milkweed; I collected this seed from Tassajara a few years ago. They're not growing well, and I think it's 'cause they're being overwatered.
Zulu Prince, a type of daisy.
Black hollyhock

Some gaw-jus flowers

Giant Princess Asters....
Celosia.....
Milkweed ("Silky Formula Mix")
Statice...
Hollyhocks......

Llopis oven-building -- Day Two

Jo on the job....
Oven after a couple of hours this morning
Oven early this afternoon....
Oven at about 5 pm....
Oven at 5:30 pm....



.... So hard to pick which pictures, out of the hundred I took today. Hopefully this gives you some idea......

Llopis oven-building -- Day One

Hey y'all,

This happened yesterday, and I only was able to take pix right before dark, so the pictures are a little dim. I only took a few; today I took about 100 photos, in between waiting to mix more concrete or carry more bricks. I'll enclose those shortly. I'm really into this whole process, seeing how it gets built. And the two Spanish guys are great. Anyway, hope you enjoy.....

More garden pix

at




Hey there,

We took these on one of our Wednesday morning flower harvests for the CSA account that we have. Eden's the one lying demurely in the truck; then there's a picture of me & Eden's Aunt Marge, a florist/horticulturalist herself who helped us one Wednesday morning, and gave us some good tips about flower cutting/storage. For instance, it's good to have flowers put in vases with warm water and sugar. And always cut the bottom of the stem at an angle, so that the plant can continue to take up water/nutrients when it's standing in a vase. Another more obscure one is that if you cut milkweed (we have a showy variety called "silky formula mix"), you should singe the bottom of the stem to keep the milky residue from seeping out.

That's it; have a great day....

Cobbin', Rise Up's Oven, plus pix of Eden and Danny's Flower/Herb Garden

Hey there,

I've included a few pix of the flower garden Eden and I have been cultivating the last several months. I wish I could find the connection between my camera and my laptop, because I'd like to take some closer photos of individual flower and herb patches, to give you a better look. But I'm thankful that my brother Paul was up here and took these pix for me. You can click on them to get a closer look....

....I've done a fair bit of work on the cob structure this week. I patched some holes in the wall with a clay/straw mix; smoothed out some of the uneven strokes of ceiling plaster with a sponge; applied earthen plaster to part of a wall; sifted clay and sand for future plaster use; raked out alot of cob that had accumulated on the floor, then leveled the floor out, dampened and tamped the floor down, added sifted road base to the floor. This coming week I'll be doing a few little things -- sifting the remainder of the clay and sand piles, wiping down the wooden rafters and applying wood finish to them, then taping their edges. The following week James, the teacher who led the cob workshop here in June that built this structure, is coming in with a crew, and they will apply the remainder of the earthen plaster on the inner walls, paint a lime wash plaster on the ceiling, and lastly, they'll put in the cob floor, now that it's all level and everything. I'm hoping I get to be involved with all of that, but I have other projects I need to work on too.

...The other big piece of news is that 2 men from Spain have arrived to install the brick oven in the common building. It's called a Llopis (pronounced "yo-peeth," or "yo-pees" if you're using a Latin American accent), and it's a special oven, costing around $50K, that is wood-fired and will be the oven for Jo & Rosie's bread-baking business. It's pretty awesome, and I will be helping provide the grunt labor for the two technicians, Juan and Francisco, who seem like pretty cool guys. I wish I spoke Spanish. Anyway, I'm hoping I can figure out my camera problem because I'm gonna take pix of the progress of the project, to show y'all.

Finally, it looks like I'm on for a presentation on Full Bloom at the Green Arcade, the new bookstore on Market & Gough that my mom's friend is opening. It looks like I'll be doing it around the 22nd of October. I'll report back when the date is for sure; I'd love to see friends and family there that night, if they can make it.

That's it!

Pix

Here are a few photos my brother Paul took over Labor Day weekend....


--> Soon to be the cupola of our common building....










--> A perspective on the Common building; This coming weekend, two Spaniards are flying in and beginning work on installing the Spanish wood-fired bread oven that Rise Up Bakery, the artisan bread bakery started by Jo & Rosie, will use. Balers will be driving down from Portland as well to begin building the strawbale walls that cover a third of the building. This is the last time I'll post any photos of the building looking this open.....


--> Distant view of the common building, with our kitchen garden in the foreground. Half of the garden has been appropriated to store lumber needed by the construction crew, so we should have a much bigger food garden next year.....













--> A long view of the common area (the common building is out of view, but on the left side of this picture). The kitchen garden's in the foreground, and left to right are the greenouse, the current common building, and Ryan & Eden's orange strawbale cottage. I'm living downstairs in the main building right now, and we all use the tiny kitchen and living room area. All of that will change when the common building is finished......




--> Looking from the common building at the kitchen garden, with a few posts for construction that still need sanding/finishing.....

Hey y'all,

-- Good news for me from yesterday: after exactly six months of trial membership here at Full Bloom Farm, I was accepted as an "associate member" for the indefinite future. Basically, I'll be a renter, with say in community issues. It's possible that in the future I could transition into being a full member, which means I'd be a part-owner, with a 30-year mortgage like the six other members of the collective, and with a say in decisions that affect the property. I don't have a reliable way of paying off the loan, and for now I'm quite happy to pay rent, participate in discussions and chores and meals, and work here on the land. So it was a happy day. I feel like I can move on with my life because I know where I'll be for the next little while.

....I've been plastering the new cob structure a bit in the past week, which I'm really enjoying. Basically, you make flour paste by boiling water and adding flour to it; then you add a mixture of sifted clay and sand, and some powdered dye for coloring, and there you have it! A nice smooth plaster. The inside walls are going to be a nice shade of red. The whole building is only 200 square feet; next summer they're gonna build a second 200 sq. foot building next to the current one.

It's 38 degrees outside right now -- can you believe it? Apparently there's ice on the windshields outside right now. I walked down to the flower garden with Ryan last night, and we noticed that
some of the winter squash we're growing down there had frost damage on their leaves. Coming from the Bay Area, where you can pretty much grow things year-round, it's shocking to me that the first frost is gonna come sometime this month (and the last frost is often in June).

....A friend of my mom's, who worked with her at Cody's Books in Berkeley, has started a new bookstore in San Francisco (it's called "The Green Arcade," on Market St. at Gough) that's dedicated to books exploring issues of environmental sustainability. I went with her to see the new store, and got to talking with Patrick, my mom's friend, who asked me if I would be interested in doing a presentation on Full Bloom at the bookstore. So I'm hoping that I can come down to the Bay in mid-October to do this presentation. That's pretty exciting. I'm gonna try and figure out how to use Powerpoint software, as well as find the little piece of equipment that transfers digital photos from my camera to the computer. Then I have to come up with the presentation, and a reading list that Patrick can order for his store to accompany the presentation. I'll let you know if this actually happens, and when -- it would be great to have friends there.

I'll end here with one of my favorite poems, by Charles Bukowski, which I'm gonna read at my men's group tonight; hope you enjoy:

THERE'S A BLUEBIRD IN MY HEART

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?




....Enjoy your day......