Moon Jar Summer School completed

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We have just completed our four day summer school, learning some of the techniques involved in the making of Korean Moon Jars. We made moon jars at the time of the full moon! Inspiration.

Moon Jars aren’t easy.

To make these big, round, full shapes, we practiced making the spherical forms in two pieces, which is the most common technique used in Korea for this difficult shape. There are a few virtuoso throwers who can make such a shape in one piece on the wheel, but very few. I’m certainly not one of them. All the workshops that I attended in Korea over the years, all made their Moon Jar forms in two pieces. Even the 14th generation, National Treasure, Moon Jar master, whose workshop I visited, had a throwing room full of thrown 1/2 pieces – bowl forms – stiffening up, ready for assembly the next day.

So I decided to teach this two part technique. We started with 1 kg to 1.5kg, then added another kilo each day, ending up with 4 kg. The object wasn’t to make full size Moon Jars. The purpose was to learn the technique of throwing and joining fat round forms. Repetition is very important in learning. We practised ’non-attachment’, if the pot wasn’t going well, then it is best to put the clay back through the pug mill and start another one. Some of these students came here last year to learn to make tall joined forms, so were familiar with the workshop and one of the joining techniques.

There are at least 3 common ways to construct the joint when assembling the 2 bowl-shaped halves used to make a Moon Jar. Each with its own level of difficulty. The easiest to throw and assemble is the flat top joint. We studied this in last years Summer School here, where we threw and assembled complex forms in 2, 3 or even 4 pieces. We were working fast and wet, so the flat top joint works very well. The two surfaces meld into each other perfectly. It also allows for some sloppiness in the measuring and sizing. The two pieces can be easily massaged into shape and it is a great way to learn a lot quickly. However, It works best on the more vertical forms. 

That said, it is the technique taught in Korea’s prestige ceramic university ‘Dangook’ university. I have watched the technique of the master thrower – Professor of Moon Jar making – teaching a throwing class using this technique. As long as you get everything level, concentric and perfectly aligned, it is the easiest to master. He made the two half-pots one day and assembled them the next. So that they were slightly stiffened. He used thick throwing slip slurry on the joint.

The next level of difficulty is the tongue and groove ‘V’ joint, where the rims of the two halves are thrown with a ‘V’ shaped hollow in the base section rim. The female part?, and the other half, the top section, is thrown with a ‘V’ shaped pointed top on the rim. The male part? These two complimentary sections fit together perfectly(hopefully), and marry up to make a very sturdy joint. But! Only if they are well formed and accurately measured.  The ‘top hat’ technique is used to join the two bowl forms. The base is firmly secured to the wheel head, then the other half is picked up by the batt on which it was thrown and quickly inverted and placed on the bottom half. Remember not to cut the top half bowl off its batt until it is inverted and placed on the lower half!

Taking the time to measure accurately is of the essence. It is also necessary to ensure that both ‘bowls’ are perfectly round. If they are thrown with a slightly oval kink in them, then a single measurement of one place on the diameter won’t be accurate. This joint requires patience and accuracy in the measuring. However, If you find that there is a slight difference in the two diameters when placing them together, as long as it is only minor – 5 to 8 mm.. You can cut off the top batt and place your hand inside the top bowl, then gently massage the ‘positive’ rim into the ’negative’ groove until it fits exactly. This will ensure a sound fit and secure joint, but may result in a slight wobble in the overall form. Probably not terminal though.

The beauty of this technique is that you can ’stiffen’ the bottom section by heating it a little. But make sure to measure it first. Then you can invert the top section straight away and continue throwing. This means that the form is still ‘fluid’ and can be reshaped slightly to make sure that you have a unified overall form. It is quite forgiving, but only up to a point. Don’t over do it, or you’ll loose the lot. Apart from being unattached to the pots that you are making, the other lesson of the week is to know when to stop.

The most difficult joining technique involves throwing the rim of each half with a 45o degree complimentary bevel on the rim of each bowl, such that they fit together perfectly. The great difficulty comes when inverting the top half and placing it onto the bottom half. Unless the pots are perfectly round, and exactly measured. They wont fit and there is no way to recover them. Also. If you miss match them slightly, there is a risk that the top half will slide down over the edge of the base. There is nothing ‘flat’ to rest on. Nothing to stop it sliding. The 45 degree surfaces slide past each other freely. Only the perfect accuracy of the fit will hold it in place. I saw this technique demonstrated by a master Moon Jar maker from Incheon, near Seoul. He also made both halves the day before and let them stiffen beforehand, then used thick slip in the joint. With the two stiffened version of this technique, both halves must be thrown to the exact shape that you require to make the full round form complete once married together. There is no possibility of ‘correcting’ the form on the wheel once assembled.

The great virtue of using 2 stiffened forms like this, is that they hold their full, round, ballon-like shape well without collapsing. So you must know exactly what you are doing right from he start. As I pointed out at the beginning of this letter, Moon Jars aren’t easy. But as you start to ‘get’ the form right, and it all starts to come together for you. They are really rewarding.

It doesn’t matter which way that you do it, as long as it sticks together and doesn’t split apart when finishing off the throwing, cracking during drying, or dunting in the firing.

The bottom half is thrown with an more vigorous and upward inflection to the curve, while the top half is a fully rounded form. It takes practice to get the balance right.

Once the pot is assembled, the foot section of the top bowl is opened up and the joint is pinched together with fingers from inside and out. If necessary, the joint can be compressed from the outside using a ‘paddle’ against a solid little round ‘anvil’ block (see previous post on tool making) on the inside to counter the pressure and compress the joint. The final action is to throw the rim up from the shoulder using the excess of clay that was in the base of the bowl.

On the second day of the workshop, we had a massive storm with loads of thunder and lightning, followed by some intense rain. Then in the afternoon, we had the most beautiful double rainbow!

Moon Jar with full Moon

Moon Jar with Southern Cross

I will be offering another Moon Jar making workshop in the coming year, so if you are interested, drop us a line. The next workshop will be on the weekend of the last day of Jan and the first day of Feb.

Preparing for the new Year

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Well, Xmas is over, we survived the shopping madness by staying home and escaped the last minute rush to purchase more food than anyone could possibly consume. Janine and I stayed well out of it. We watered the garden and picked fresh vegetables made salads and tofu stir-frys. A very nice quiet time in all. I had no intension of going into town to check out the Boxing Day sales. I fact, instead, we had a lovely, small, family meal with our son and daughter-in-law, and took it very quietly. We shared a very nice bottle of wine with lunch. I cooked a somewhat rich potato dauphinois incorporating our potato and fennel, plus a tub of sour cream and garden herbs, which turned out very well.

I simmered the herbs in a little bit of milk to draw out the flavours, then layered the finely sliced fennel and potatoes with sour cream and poured the strained milk over and through it all. I finished the dish with a camembert cheese placed on top to melt through the dish. As if the tub of sour cream wasn’t quite enough, and topped it off the some grated 36 month aged cheddar.  I was happy with it and no one complained.

On the subject of potatoes, we have had a visit from a new and unusual bug into the veggie garden. Some sort of elongated, grey, shield bug. They group in pairs around the tender top shoots and suck the living daylights out of the growing tips of the potato plants. I haven’t seen these little critters before, so I had to look them up. They turn out to be a South East Asian ‘sweet-potato’ bug. Also known to be found in the North of South America and the Southern parts of North America. How they got here I have no idea. I can only surmise that with global heating, they are able to colonise newly warming fresh territories? So hello and hopefully good bye!

I’m sure that the garden shop will have any number of toxic sprays for them. However, they are quite susceptible to being squashed by hand! No poisons required, it’s highly selective, and no toxic residue is left behind. This organic ‘natural’ treatment seems to be working. I have noticed quite a few lady bugs on the potato leaves at this time also. Possibly they ere eating the minuscule shied beetle eggs? That would be nice if there was a local predator that could breed up to counter the new pest? Could life be so simple?

Someone once said that every complex problem has at least a dozen simple solutions – and they are all wrong! There is nothing quite so effective, accurate and environmentally friendly as well trained fingers. Time consuming, but 100% effective.

We have ended the year by making clay to prepare ourselves for the coming year.  I even sat down and threw a pot straight away to test out the plasticity of this new mix. It was beautiful! It will be even better after a couple of months in the cool, dark, clay store to age a little.

As we are hosting a 4 day summer school in the coming week, I cleaned out the pottery and transformed it back from a sales room for the Xmas sale and back into a throwing room. I took the opportunity to really clean down the benches and wheel tops, then gave them a coat of tung oil to protect the wood for another year. All this wood was milled on-site here from trees that we grew ourselves. I want to honour this timber and look after it. It’s just one small, but integral part of our 50 year history/legacy of living and thriving here.

All the timber now looks rich and glorious! While I was in wood working mode, I made a pile of paddles and wooden ‘anvils’. To be used in the coming workshop for forming and securing the joints of large pots. I made everything from off-cuts and prunings of trees in the garden and orchards, including apple, pear, cedar, juniper, pine and banksia.

Making beautiful pottery tools from timber that you have grown yourself is a very rewarding activity. I suspect that this is a special privilege available only to older potters, as you need to plan for it at least 40 years in advance! The old saying comes to mind – When is the best time to plant a tree? Answer, 20 years ago! We have earned these beautiful tools in more ways than one.

Every morning I wake up, I am gifted another 24 hours to enjoy the sunshine, fresh air, the people round me, the garden and the chance to be engaged in creative activity I really value this opportunity, and strive to make the most of it. In contrast, every morning I don’t wake to find that I am gifted $$$. A lot of people who chase money all their life, find that they have no time. In some ways, I am fantastically wealthy. I have never chased money, instead I have time. Time to be engaged in my creative life. I really value this meaningful and fully engaged life.

We recently hosted a tool making weekend, and taught other potters this evocative and rewarding skill. Beautifully hand crafted tools that you have made yourself embody extra meaning into the work that you make, if for no other reason than just from the emotional energy that you generate from the enjoyment of the activity of the handling and making. However, there could be more to it. 

In the pacific islands, there is a potent energy that they call ‘mana’. Not the christian goodies (manna) that drop from heaven, but a highly potent spiritual energy that is embodied in special objects at the time of their making, by unique and powerful individuals, or bestowed into objects by force of will by that unique, potent and powerful individual. It may be an object like a club, or spear, but also in jewellery and other personal objects. Such objects are highly prized and valued. The ‘mana’ is embodied in the object, and once they are passed on, that special energy is perceived and valued by the subsequent owners. I can understand this numinous like feeling embodied in beautifully crafted objects. Perhaps they can pass on something of the spirit of the maker? I like to think so.

Have a safe, creative, fertile, prosperous and rewarding New Year!

Nothing is ever finished, nothing is ever perfect and nothing lasts.

Seasons Greetings

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Not being religious, I don’t wish people a Merry Christmas, most often I like to wish people a quiet, peaceful, none-commercial, family-oriented summer solstice holiday break – if you can get one!

Not everyone can get a day off on the 25th of December. Our son worked as a chef for 20 years. He was always at work cooking everybody else’s festive lunch and dinner, for them to have a time off with their family. So for those twenty-odd years, we never had a Christmas Day lunch together as a family. We always made up for it, by having a big family lunch the next day after the restaurant had closed for the long week between Xmas and New Year. 
However,  there was one big benefit, There was always some food left over in the kitchen that wouldn’t keep for the 10 day shut down over the new year break, so someone had to eat it. After he had spent so much time cooking it all. It made an easy Boxing Day lunch of luxurious leftovers. Over the years, we had prawns, oysters and even lobster added to our garden oriented veggie meal.

This year, our son purchased some new chickens for his wife for Xmas. So as to have them as a surprise for her on the day, he collected them during the week and brought them here to our house to keep in our chicken run with our girls until the big day. These chickens are bred for commercial use in big egg farms. By buying them for domestic use, we are rescuing them from a terrible life of confined servitude. 
Three of the new chickens are white like leghorns, and the other 3 are dark brown. The 3 white hens were the first to take the lead and suss out the run. One is quite talkative, clucking all the time. I call her ‘clucks’, One other is very ‘cluey’ and quickly discovered the water and feed bowls, then the first to venture out into the big orchard to scratch around. The third clung closely to her white sisters, forming a ‘clan’. Completely undaunted by their new surroundings, they took the lead in exploring this new situation. They have it all over the other hens – White Supremicists! 
I have named them the ‘clue’, ‘clucks’, ‘clan’!

It’s traditional at this time of year to send out cards with red and green images redolent of Northern Hemisphere holly. So I am adding a few red and green, organic, home grown, local images.
Have a quiet, peaceful, none-commercial, family-oriented, summer solstice holiday break!
Keep safe.

A Special Xmas Sale

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Janine and I will be open on Sunday the 14th of December for a A Special Xmas Sale!

Sunday 14th December. 9am – 5pm.

Steve Harrison and Janine King’s Pottery Studio, 

5 Railway Pde, Balmoral Village, 2571. 

hotnsticky@ozemail.com.au.  blog; tonightmyfingerssmellofgarlic.com

Half Price, Xmas Sale.

We are 1 1/2 hour drive south of Sydney. Please join us for our 1/2 price, Xmas sale, where everything in the gallery will be sold at 50% off! One day only. Sunday 14th December.

No tricks or gimmicks. Everything will be for sale at half of the usual marked price.

This is a definite once-off event.

We pride our selves on making highly sustainable ceramics, fired using PV sunshine or our own home grown timber. All our clay bodies and glazes are home made, on-site. We also offer tours of our workshop.

Please consider calling in and doing some discount priced Xmas Shopping.

We have never done this kind of thing before. It’s all new to us. Please come and take advantage of us!

We will also have a few of our friends with us;

Karen, who will be displaying her hand made jewellery. Roxanne, who will be showing some of her impressionistic paintings of my pots, and our son Geordie, who will be selling his hand made fruit cordials. Made from the organically grown fruit in our orchard and other fruit from local orchards.

Tours of the gardens and orchards will be available.

The Pottery studio and gardens.

Our son Geordie, making some of his ‘adult’ cordials.

Karen’s jewellery display.

Roxanne’s beautiful and expressionistic paintings of pots.

First Tomato of the Season

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We have picked the first red tomato of the summer, well before Xmas. Always an achievement, but not so special these recent years, as with accelerating global heating, we are so much hotter and everything in the garden is ripening earlier.

When we moved here to the highlands in 1976, we couldn’t get a ripe berry off our newly planted berry canes until January. These days the berry crop is all over and gone well before Xmas.

We are harvesting peaches, apricots, the last of the late sour cherries, as well as strawberries and blueberries. We don’t make any pots over December and January, as we are full time involved in managing the fruit from the orchards and the summer flush of vegetables.

The zucchinis are going mad, so we are having a few meals of stuffed zucchini flowers. It’s a lovely summer time light meal. It achieves 2 important outcomes, by picking the flowers off the plant with the nascent fruit attached behind, it makes a colourful and delicious meal, but it also takes the fruit off so early that they don’t get a chance to explode into marrows if you just glance away for a moment or loose concentration, zucchinis fill out so very fast!  Managing zucchinis means defusing them every morning early before they expand like The Big Bang!

The heat also means fruit fly problems, we get in early in October/November with ‘DAK’ pots, male fruit fly lures, and protein lures for the female flys. I also spray a ‘spinetoram’ soil bacteria and dipel bacteria for the codling moths. I also place codling moth lures in half a dozen of the various trees that are susceptible to codling moth, like apples, pears and quinces. Everything we do is approved for organic gardening. Still, with all this effort, we still get fruit fly strike. It’s important to pick the fruit early and cook it to preserve it either in the freezer or in ‘Vacola’ vacuum jars, and stored for later in the year.

Last weekend I ran a couple of pottery ’tool-making’ workshops. I take small groups of 5 or 6 potters through the steps in making their own tools specific to their particular needs and preferences. There are at least a dozen specific tools that anyone could choose to make but to be realistic, a novice tool maker can only realistically achieve 3 or 4 really nice and well crafted tools in a day, so you have to chose what is most appealing and useful ti you. I don’t expect everyone to finish every tool on the day, but if all the roughing out is done and only the fine finishing is left to do. It’s best to take it home and do all that time consuming fine sanding and oiling at a later time. Best to make use of my skills and my workshop equipment to get as much done here as is realistically achievable in the time.

Making your own tools gives you 2 important outcomes, firstly the tool will be exactly what you want and need, unlike some of the rubbish that is sold in the ‘basic’ pottery tool set sold in the cheap shops. The only good item in that plastic bag is the sponge! the rest all need work. The best thing to do with badly designed tools is to cut them up or down to make them more appropriate. Don’t be afraid, just cut it, grind it, file it or whatever until it does the job that you want. If you can’t make it work for you, just put it away and make a good one from scratch. 

This is the 2nd important outcome. It gives you the skills and insight to design and make the exact tool for you for that particular job. If it doesn’t work, then you know how to re-shape it until it does work how you want. Just because you bought it – possibly at great expense – from a reputable craft shop, doesn’t mean that it will be the best shape for you. If it doesn’t work, don’t hesitate. Don’t waste time struggling with it. Take the initiative, cut it up or grind some off it, or possibly just put it in the ‘Down-To-Experience-Bucket’ and make a proper one. 

There is also a 3rd benefit. Making your own tools can be virtually free by recycling scrap material. There is a huge sense of satisfaction in sitting back and admiring a beautifully crafted tool that you made yourself from a branch off a fruit tree growing in your garden. Home grown organic tools. AND, so rewarding and satisfying. Making your own things feeds your soul. Re-use, re-purpose, re-cycle.

I made a stir fry of garden veggies and tofu for dinner to feed my soul and my belly.

Nothing is perfect, nothing is ever finished and nothing lasts.

The Last Days of Spring

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It’s the last days of spring, and I have been very busy doing all sorts of little jobs that have been waiting for me to find some ‘spare’ time. We were so flat out busy working in the pottery leading up to the open Studios weekends. Now it’s time for other things.

Although it’s still spring, it seems like summer has been with us here in Balmoral Village for the past 6 weeks and more. The lush green spring growth is long gone. It’s been hot and dry, interspersed with cold, blustery, windy days. The net effect has been to dry everything out. The paddocks and lawn around the house have browned off. The soil in the vegetable garden has dried out to the point of shrinking, and starting to crack open in the places where we are not watering the nascent, emerging seedlings, destined to become our summer food source. We keep the soil moist around the seedlings and let the other areas stay dry – until I need that spot to plant more vegetables.

We have spent years nurturing the local soil here. Improving it with multiple applications of compost and manure, interspersed with additions of lime and dolomite. Over the decades, the depth of the fertile, friable topsoil has increased to over 300 mm.possibly more in places. I never seem to hit the hard iron stone and sandy loam layer anymore. The worms take the organic matter down deep and mix it well. I just keep adding compost to the top as a fertilising mulch. 

It was a real shock and learning experience to discover how effective worms are at disseminating organic matter down through soil to amazing depths, given time and repeated applications of organic matter/compost. After the bad fires here in 2019, our orchard trees got very badly burnt, so I decided to move the orchard up closer to the street and to build the new pottery on the old orchard site. When we started to dig out the stumps of the 45 year old fruit trees, I was amazed that the rick chocolate brown top soil when down half a metre or more. When I planted those trees in 1976, the holes I dug for each tree were dug through hard yellow stoney loam. What a change in the soil profile over those years. Thank you worms.

The zucchinis are starting to produce well now. They come on quite fast from seedlings to fruiting in a few weeks in this warm weather. I have been picking them small with the flower still on and stuffing the flowers with cottage cheese and herbs for a light fun dinner.

We also have plenty of silver beet/chard at the moment, although it is starting to bolt with the longer days. I have planted more seeds for a follow-on crop. I have been making spanakopita-like spinach and cheese triangles, or spanapotterka as I like to call them, or sometimes whole pies with a similar filling. It’s a great way to use up our excess of leafy greens, as they bolt away in the heat, and maximise our return from them before they are all gone. but it does need the ricotta, fetta, blue cheese and herbs mix to make it special. Plus a light touch of chilli.

I have also been making a few fruit tarts as well. Something for a more relaxed and comforting morning tea. Since the Open Studio sales are over and the 50% off Xmas sale hasn’t happened yet. Not until the 14th of December. The pottery is all cleaned out and set up for sales, I don’t want to mess it all up making more pots just now, as we still have plenty of stock. So I have time in the garden and kitchen catch up and do a lot of things that I like to do, but haven’t had the time to fit in, until now. 

We have picked the last of the artichokes and cauliflowers. I made a vegetable pasta with the artichoke hearts and as the cauliflower was so far gone. I mashed it up and used it as vegetable filling to bulk out the sauce with last summer’s tomato passata.

This week we picked the last of the cherries and the first of the apricots.

I like working in the garden, especially in the warmth of the season, before it gets too hot. Everything responds so well and so fast at this time of year. There is always some fragrance in the air and birdsong on the wind, often fighting over the last of the high fruit in the mulberry tree or some other treasured and favoured food source. They squabble and chatter and squark and carry on, endless entertainment.

While in the garden, I noticed that one of the ancient wooden barrels that I bought 3rd, or even 4th hand, some 30 years ago, have finally rotted away to the point of collapsing. The staves have rotted away from the inside with the constant wetting and drying as we water the blueberries that we are growing in them.

I hate to see waste, so I made one of the rotted staves into a textured pottery tool. A paddle for creating texture while changing the shape of a larger pot. I’m teaching a weekend workshop of tool making next weekend, so this can be one of the projects. i have lots of these old textured staves now. I had to shape and add and new wooden baton, to reinforced and strengthen the handle. A rewarding project that avoids waste and recycles some old timber into something useful and precious. I love the natural, organic texture of the old weathered wood.

Once that was done I set to and cut, folded and rolled a new galvanised steel sheet ring to slide over the old soil base to keep the bush alive. I slipped the ring up and over the bush, down around the soil base. I made the new ring to be just 50mm larger in diameter to make the job easy. It fitted perfectly! I filled the small gap around the edge with some light soil and compost mix, eventually watering it all in to settle it down. It cost me about $30 to make this new steel pot, and it was quick and easy, as I didn’t need to move the plant and all its soil. A new 1/2 wine barrel would cost a couple of hundred dollars these days. So out of our budget range. $30 seems cheap to me for a 750mm dia garden pot, 400 mm high.

This new steel pot isn’t as beautiful, rustic and weathered as the old wooden barrels. The wood has a certain ‘natural’ beauty that I love, but I ask myself. “Are they 6 times better?” Possibly? But then I think of trying to lift the 100kgs of soil and root ball up and into a new wooden pot. I couldn’t do it anymore. So I’m playing it safe. I’m happy with the new pot.

Of course work in the pottery is never completely over. We have a summer school and other throwing weekend workshops booked in for the new year, so It’s time to make more clay body to get it all laid down and ageing, ready for when it’s needed in the new year. Our pottery workshop is laid out in such a way that the creative side is quite seperate from the more dusty, noisey, messy side of the business where we crush and grind all our glaze materials and make our clay bodies.

Janine and I have processed over a tonne of clay this year through our equipment. Each batch that we make is unique. As we do everything ourselves, we can make each batch of clay slightly different in order to closely match the type of projects that we are planning to make. This latest batch is slightly coarser in texture to facilitate making larger forms. The added grit helps the clay to stand up better in larger forms. We also make fine stoneware as well as porcelain.

After all the clay is processed, pugged twice and then bagged and put to bed, everything is scrubbed down and the floor is mopped. 

I like to keep the workshop as dust free as is possible. After a change of water and a 2nd mopping, the big roller doors at each end of the workshop are opened up and the breeze flows through and drys the floor. 

We are good now for the next 3 months. We are very lucky to have such good equipment that allows us to make large amounts of clay like this in a couple of days. All this gear is very old and has had a difficult history. But I manage to keep it all going, maintaining it as best as I can, cobbling together disparate parts and spares from here and there and making up special bits where they aren’t available any more. Its a challenge, and rewarding when it all works.

Nothing is even finished, nothing is ever perfect,  and nothing lasts.

It’s been so Hot.

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It’s been so dry lately, we haven’t had significant rain for over 2 months. Just a couple of millimetres every now and then. All our fruit trees and garden vegetables are suffering. We have to water every day now, as the daytime temperatures rise significantly. The situation isn’t helped by the hot, gusty, dry winds, desiccating everything with green leaves. I have recently planted out a lot of little seedlings, so they need daily watering to keep them alive.

There are even cracks developing in the bare earth of the veggie garden, where the weeds have dried out and died. I haven’t seen cracked soil like this since the last drought ending in the catastrophic bush fires of 2019. It’s not an endearing sign.

We are OK for the moment, as there is still some water in the the dams, but they are all low, the main top dam is very low. I will have to pump water up from the lowest dam, up to the middle dam, and then from there, up into the top dam. It’s our natural summer routine of the transhumance of water!

It’s quite a rigmarole and takes a couple of days of pumping. However, although it is a lot of work and it is time consuming. I consider myself so lucky that we have the dams that we dug here 4 decades ago, so that we can continue to water our gardens. I was once told that, the harder you work, the luckier you get, or so it seems just now. Now that all the sweat, effort and aching muscles are forgotten. Maybe, It isn’t luck!

I use one of the petrol driven fire fighting pumps to do the transfer. It keeps the pump motor in good nik. I know that it is starting easily but not running reliably. That’s important to know going into such a dry start to summer. I will need to pull the carbi off tomorrow and see what’s going on. This is a job that can’t be put off. It needs to be done now. I need to know that I can activate the fire fighting system immediately and reliably when needed.

I need this pump to be 100% reliable before the summer heat comes in. motors need constant attention.

I’m reminded that nothing is ever finished, nothing is perfect and nothing lasts.

Although we are still in the last month of spring, already the grass has dried off in the paddocks and lawn around the house. I am watering the 4 new avocado trees every 2nd day, just to keep some moisture in the soil for them to get established. It must be quite a shock to their system, to go from a mollycoddled, tropical, irrigated and shade cloth covered nursery environment, to this hot, dry, windy place. 3 of the trees have dropped a few leaves in the past few days in this wind. Not a good sign, but what can we do?

If the summer looks like getting worse, and that’s very likely. I might have to cover them in shade cloth to ease the stress. Just until they settle in and start to produce some new leaves and a spurt of growth at the tips. They hate drying out, but hate getting water logged even worse, so watering every 2nd day seems to be keeping the soil just moist. The last time that I planted 4 new avocado trees, the wallabies came in and ate the tops out over night. So this time the wire mesh fencing went up around them straight away. And guess what? The wallaby left its tracks right up to the new trees last night, and the wire mesh did its job.

Some of the dozen new dwarf cherry trees that I planted last winter have had their first tiny crop of cherries on them. We are enjoying deserts of mixed orchard fruits of cherries, mulberries, blueberries and strawberries, dressed with a little fresh cream. That is pretty special and makes all the past mowing, weeding, pruning and watering so worthwhile.

The mulberries are in full season just now, so I have been making mulberry tarts. It’s a definite once-a-year treat. As the fruiting season only lasts a couple of weeks.

Our son Geordie has started a new business making small batch, seasonal cordials, while he waits for his liquor licence to come through. He has been a gin distiller for the past few years since the fire. He has now gone out on his own. Without the liquor licence, he can’t sell his gin as yet. But he can make and sell his special, small batch, local, seasonal cordials. A lot of the produce for this has come from our garden and orchards so far.

He has been making lemon cordial from our lemons with the sophisticated addition of lemon balm, lemon thyme and lemon grass to fill out the flavour profile. These are adult cordials. Made in small batches from our real, home grown, organic fruit. unsprayed, unwaxed, freshly picked, just minutes off the tree. No carbon miles, just carbon feet. Actually, we walked, so no carbon at all!. His fruit cordials offer solid, rich flavours, sophisticated flavours, not just some sugary flavoured coloured water.

Yesterday we made a very nice, rich, dark, mulberry/lime cordial with the addition of 3 different mint leaves, chocolate mint, spear mint and garden mint, plus kaffir lime leaves and our home grown and hand squeezed Tahitian lime juice.

One of my favourites is his strawberry and basil cordial, beautifully flavour-full and a delicately dense pink colour. The combination is surprisingly good, but we can only make this combination in the spring/summer season when we can grow enough sweet basil. These are definitely, small batch, seasonal products.

Geordie has called his company, ‘Bantam Beverages’, small batch, seasonal drinks. He was selling them here during the Arts trail – Open Studio sale. We sold out of the strawberry and basil, and only had a few bottles of the lemon mix left. We are helping make more stock now, so he will have more bottles to sell on the special, one day only, half price sale on the Sunday 14th of December.

Come along on Sunday 14th of December for a free tasting and some 1/2 price pots.

Sunday 14th December. 9am – 5pm.

Steve and Janine’s Pottery Workshop, at the old School,

5 Railway Pde, Balmoral Village, 2571. 

Weekend Workshops in December and January

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Now that the Arts Trail, Open Studios weekends are over for another year, it’s time to start thinking about the next December Weekend Workshop and January Summer School.

I’m planning to offer a one day tool making workshop on the first weekend in December, Saturday 6th. Tool Making.  The cost is $150.  (1 day)

As these workshops often fill up. I may offer another one later on in the year? If there is sufficient interest.

Those of you who have attended our workshops in the past, will know that Janine and I make most of our own tools and equipment, from simple cutting wires and turning tools, through to the extreme of making our own fire bricks to build our own wood fired kiln. We have even built our own workshop buildings over the years. We have a go at everything. We try to be as self-reliant as we can be, without being fanatical and boring.

For this workshop, I’m planning to demonstrate making a range of simple tools from throwing tools and profiles, to turning tools, paddles, small callipers and stainless needle tool, turning tools  etc.

Its a one day workshop and all the materials are included, recycled cedar and pine wood, stainless steel and galvanised steel, fruit tree prunings, nylon line, etc. 

No experience necessary, but it would be an advantage if you were interested in learning to use some power tools like a jig saw, bench grinder and electric sander, etc. it make the work quicker, But this is not necessary.

You don’t have to use power tolls. If you are squeamish about power tools. There are slower alternatives using just all hand tools, but this will be much slower. You won’t necessary get every project finished. I’m happy to set you up with these hand tool alternatives. You can finish them at home – if needed. Hand-working and especially the hand-finishing, sanding/filing/oiling, can be the most rewarding part.

10 am till 4 pm. Please bring something to share for lunch.

We have a fridge to store perishable food items, and we provide a hot water urn, plus tea and coffee provided.

January Summer School. Joined forms. Throwing Korean inspired, Australian ‘Moon Jars’. (4 Days)

This is an intermediate to advanced wheel throwing workshop. You must be able to centre and throw 3 kgs on the potters wheel.

4 days from January 3rd to 6th. Cost $600

I’ll be providing our own specially developed, textured clay body specifically prepared in-house for the throwing of larger items. 

10 am till 4 pm . Please bring something to share for lunch.

We have a fridge to store perishable food items, and we provide a hot water urn plus tea and coffee.

Places are limited, so first in best dressed.

later in the year, I’m thinking about offering other courses;

Geology/rock glazes for potters course (3 days, one weekend, plus an extra Sunday.).

Domestic ware, repetition throwing to a specific weight and size. An exercise in discipline. (2 days)

Throwing for wood firing. (2 days)

Stoneware Wood firing (3 days) winter time only. (one weekend, plus an extra Sunday.)

Please reply if you are interested in either of these 2 workshops, and I’ll put you on my waiting list.

If we can get enough numbers, the workshops will run.

Best wishes
Steve

Dr. Steve Harrison PhD. MA (Hons)
hotnsticky@ozemail.com.au
blog; tonightmyfingerssmellofgarlic.com
Potter, retired kiln surgeon, clay doctor, wood butcher and Post Modern Peasant.

Gundungurra/Dharawal Country
I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded and that we are all on stolen land. 

I pay my respects to Elders, past, present and emerging.

In the Eye of the Storm

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We are making use of that quiet time between weekend studio sales.Last week, we had the first of the Open Studio weekends for the Arts Trail. It went well.

We had a slow start on Saturday, and then it went completely quiet in the afternoon. Janine made use of the quiet time, to go into Mittagong and visit 3 other studios that she was keen to see. She said it was also a bit quiet in town as well. Balmoral Village is a long way out of town, a 20 minute drive, so we expect to see less people here than they get in town. In Mittagong or Bowral, there is a wide range of choice, all within 3 to 5 mins.

On the other hand, Sunday was moderately busy for us, and it kept up all day, so that was good. Never run off our feet, but just one car followed another, so we constantly had a couple of people in the gallery all day. To the extent that we had to stagger our lunches to be on-hand to serve customers. We were lucky to have our friend Karen with us to help out, so Janine and I could spend time with our visitors to answer questions and explain the aesthetic choices that we had made in creating the variety of work on show.

As there were not too many visitors last weekend. The Gallery is still full up with pots waiting for new owners to take them home.

So this week we have been in the quiet time between the two busy weekends. In The Eye of the Storm. We made use of this special ‘time-off’ rest period, to do a bit of gardening. We weeded and dug-over the old annual flower garden area that I created and fenced off after the fire, so as to keep the chickens, wallabies, rabbits and wombat out of the garden. No fence, No flowers! In the years since the fire, I have created other annual flower beds on both sides of the pottery and also along the driveway, so that the older, fenced-off garden slipped out of use for floral display. Janine has now claimed it as her new herb garden, so hence all the digging.

After using the cultivator to dig over the new herb patch for Janine. I then had 2 days building a dry stone retaining wall and back filling it with 10 tonnes of topsoil/compost mix to create a deep terrace for a new avocado bed. We have had an avocado tree for over 45 years. It’s very well established, but only ever has a few fruit on it. This is because avocados, although self fertile, are only marginally so. In fact, there are two Groups of avocados, known as ’Type A’ and ‘Type B’. You need one of each to get the extra fertilisation for good ‘fruit-set’.

Some years before the fire, in about 2015, I planted 2 more  ‘Type A’ and 2 x ’Type B’ grafted trees. After a few years, they started to mature and flower. That year we had a massive crop of hundreds of fruit on our old tree. Success!  I don’t know what variety our old tree is, so it was necessary to plant at least one of each A & B to ensure good fertility. I chose to plant 2 different varieties of each group. 

Shortly after that massive crop. The catastrophic bush fires swept through here and incinerated every thing in its path. All the little new avocado trees were vaporised to below ground level. The old tree was very badly burnt and lost all its smaller branches. I thought that it had died. However, when the rains came, it very slowly put out some new shoots and started to regrow. It’s only half the size that it was, but at least it is still alive.

Having seen that extra trees of either ‘Type A’ or ’Type B’, solved the fertility problem. I decided, after everything had settled down again, post clean-up and rebuilding, that I would replant more young avocados trees. Again I chose 2 x ‘Type A’ and 2 x ’Type B’ grafted trees. Sadly, in the years post fire, we had torrential rains for months on end, the ground was so soggy. I spent quite some time digging extra drains to help clear all the water away. Unfortunately, avocados are very susceptible to root rot, ‘phytophthora’ soil fungus. All the new avocados drowned and died! I decided after that to give up on growing avocados. As each grafted tree cost between $50 and $80, I have spent around $500 of these trees over my lifetime here. I could buy a lot of smashed avocado sandwiches for that!

However, I am an eternal optimist, so recently, I decided to give it one last go. I have bought 4 more trees, but this time grafted onto dwarfing rootstock ‘Velvick’, which is also mildly resistant to phytophthora.

This explains the new elevated, well drained, garden bed and stone retaining wall. This new terraced area is 4m x 10m and 500 to 600 mm deep. Filled with a rich mixture of sandy top soil and organic compost mix. 10 tonnes in all. It was quite an effort and I’m feeling my age today. As Leonard Cohen once said. “I ache in the places that I use to play”.

This will definitely be my last go at avocados. It should provide a well drained, rich soil for the new trees to grow in. Well elevated above the natural soil level, I’m hoping that this might be the solution.

They are right in front of the water tanks, so no problem with irrigation.

All that I have to concern myself with now is the winter frosts! But that’s a while off yet.

With a restful break like this. I need to get back to work to recover!

New pots for the Open Studio, Arts Trail

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The pottery and its garden are looking great just now and for the next few weeks. All the spring flowers are coming out, just in time for the Open Studio weekends.

We are firing both electric kilns every day for the past week. We are getting all of the final glaze firings done. Working like a well oiled machine. We have been so lucky, that the sun has been shining bright every day – until today. It’s overcast with just a few spots of drizzly rain now and then. Just enough to stop me wanting to go out and do some gardening. I have two more firings on. One stoneware and one gold lustre firing. It’s all coming together.

We have managed to do all our firings on sunshine up until this afternoon, when it had turned quite overcast. Not only have we managed to glaze everything with our own electricity, but I have been careful to manage it so that I have kept both electric cars fully charged, at the same time and still been able to sell just a little of our occasional excess back to the grid to cover our daily access charges. It’s important to me to live a green, low carbon, passive, low energy, non polluting, life of minimal consumption, and we are doing it. We are managing it pretty well. But this afternoon, I will be withdrawing some expensive ‘green’ sustainable energy from the grid, for the last 3 hours of these current firings.

I have been experimenting with some new coloured pastel slips that I developed before we went to WA for the conference. See my previous post;  More rain and tasting cider, Posted on 

I weighed out almost 300 different pastel tones of stoneware slips. 

Using these colours, I tried making some new square plates, with a Korean inspired ‘Bojagi’ traditional fabric design. I’m very pleased with them, for a first attempt. I quite like the one were I ‘channel’ Piet Mondrian. Mondrianic bojagi!

I have also been making some more Korean inspired ‘Moon Jars’, but with an Australian twist. No photos yet, that are still in the kilns.

Please call in to see us on the next two weekends 1st/2nd and the 8th/9th of November. We will have tea or coffee and even cake for the first in and best fed.

In the kitchen, I’ve been harvesting lots of leaks, and making chicken and leak pie. I’ve got quite quick at knocking up small batches of wholemeal pastry for pie crusts and pizza bases.

We may be very busy in the pottery, but there is always time to raid the garden for food for dinner and to cook up something wholesome and delicious for dinner.