The Clay Oven Caper

I've always liked making bread.  I suspect it's the same as potters throwing pots.  There is something in the formless gooiness of the preparations that takes a mind out of itself and turns the world into a sensual mass ideally suited for a countertop concerto for two hands.  Since finding our anchorage along marsh-front property in Becker County, Minnesota and with three years of engagement in our fertile Blue Moon Garden we have come to the conclusion that a day without homemade bread on the table is a day wasted.  A lingering issue is how to make bread in Minnesota in the summertime without baking the bread and the occupants of the farmhouse, namely; Lyn and I, the parrots and our dog Tess.  A bright idea has found me and the caper goes like this.

Somehow the bread baking has to occur outside the house.  I've heard of Basque sheep herders building their own rock ovens in the mountains of Montana (and elsewhere of course too as Basques have been world travelers since Basques became Basques or so I'm told).  Here, on the White Earth Indian Reservation in Northwestern Minnesota we are blessed with some essentials for making an outdoor baking oven.  Maybe I'm not blessed with ingenuity like the Basques, but that shouldn't keep me from finding the keys to the kingdom of clay oven building.

We live on a glacial ridge loaded with lakes and marshes as I've already mentioned, but also blessed with more glacier tumbled rock than there are fish in the sea.  Ask any farmer from this area if he's ever picked rock before spring plowing and she'll look at you like you barfed up a goldfish.  So, the Basques in the mountains don't have anything on us there.

The name "White Earth" comes from the workings of the glaciers as well.  Under the 9 to 15 inches of nearly black topsoil of this area lies several feet of a whitish clay, slightly loamy subsoil that, although not a pure clay, it is a very suitable base for making adobe.  What would be added after removing some of the pebbles and other minor impurities would be some straw.  Luckily, the normal crop rotations in this area are corn, wheat and soybeans followed by corn, wheat and soybeans ad nosium.... There must be some straw in there somewhere, right?

Now if only the glaciers had left some sandy outwash plains nearby.  Well, shucks if they didn't.  There is no sand on Blue Moon Farm, but within two miles there is a gravel operation with enough sand to fill the new Twins ballpark.

So.  I need some wood according to the recipes I've seen for building and heating an outdoor clay oven.  No shortage of wood here either.  We are situated in the transition zone between the prairie and mixed conifer vegetation types mapped in Minnesota.  Lyn and I heat our little farmhouse primarily with hardwood from our 25 acres of woodland on our 80 acre farm.  There.  The ingredients for constructing a clay oven are available and abundant.  So what's the holdup.  Certainly it's not the bread dough I have waiting in the refrigerator.

No!  It's my lack of confidence that I can pull off this caper without a trusty Basque or Hopi or kiln builder guiding the way.  That's really nonsense when I look at the addition I just added to our house so we had an entry room to take off muddy or wet boots before entering our dining area.  Should be the same skill set as that endeavor was:

0.  Design the project if you have time.
1.  Gather materials.  Then, make a materials list after redundant trips to Menards.
2.  Consider the order for constructing the project after you have some of the work done.
2a. Re do the design.
3.  Throw away all designs and keep working toward the image you have in your minds eye.
4.  Cuss your way through the mistakes.
5.  Start over if necessary.
6.  Get help when things really turn to crap.
7.  Start over.
8.  Hire someone to do it for you.
9.  Go in the house and make bread dough if that's what you're good at.
10.  Wait until the oven is finished by the Basque you imported from Northern Spain or Southern France, depending on your country of origin.
11.  Go outside and throw some bread dough in the oven and wait for the black smoke to come out of the chimney.
12.  That means the College of Cardinals have elected a new pope, and;
13.  Start over....

Well, you know what I mean.   And thus, the title of this post.  Lyn said I can't start anymore projects this year.  I guess that means I have already spent beyond our means on the 'mudroom' and constructing 5 or 6 prototype clay ovens all over the farm might mean further bankruptcy filings for us (we are small scale non-commodities farmers you know).

Stay tuned as this frivolous, carefree episode continues, and please; keep the green side up or remember the old saying; "If it's brown flush it down, if it's green feed it to the cows or make salad out of it."  Let me check my notes on that one again, but I think that's pretty close.

The Blue Moon Farmer-Baker-Not So Basque Clay Oven Builder