We have been having some good cleansing frosts this last week or so. White and crunchy, this is good to clean out any remnants of fruit fly in the orchard. It also helps to set the chemical clock in the stone fruit trees that need a few hours of very cold weather to make the next seasons flowers fertile. This is called their ‘low chill hours’.

Inside, it’s been a busy time, as usual here. Janine is back from her trip up north, and I have been cleaning out the loft area above the clay making and rock crusher rooms. There is a space up there that is sort of a loft, but it was never intended to be a useful space. Just a way of enclosing the noise and dust from clay making and rock crushing in the small ground floor rooms. The space above them just had ’stuff’ stored up there. Mostly left over insulation bats and silver paper sisalation. Plus half a dozen mixed sheets and off-cuts of thin bracing ply wood, that I had used for the ceilings of the throwing room and gallery.

The only access to this ‘loft’ area was, until recently, by bringing in a ladder. A while ago the idea crossed my mind that we could use it as a place where students could sleep over when they stayed to do wood firings. 

In the past, before the fire, they used to pitch tents in the orchard, or stay in local bnbs. Sometimes, even sleeping in their cars.

We recently built a stair case to get up there safely. Using a lot of scrap timber, heavy duty ply, and our own home grown and milled pine boards that we had left over and stored. It turned out really well and cost next to nothing. I built it in two days with assistance of Janine’s brother John, a retired carpenter. I couldn’t have done it alone. John was the brains and I only assisted.

So while Janine was away I began cleaning it out and used the left over rockwool to insulate the ceiling/roof and then panel it with the ply wood. Amazingly, I didn’t have to buy anything to do the job. I was able to do it all by using what was already stacked up there! Even down to the box of ’TEK’ screws.

I started by building a safety railing/balustrade along the edge, using some off cuts of poly carbonate from the car port wall. 

Stuffing the rockwool into the roof was a bit like easing a compliant orangutang into the roof cavity, all soft and fury.

I used old tomato stakes from the garden to act as the extra several pairs of hands needed to hold up the ply wood, while I got the first few roofing screws into the sheets to secure them in place.

We were gifted the tatami mats from a lovely friend who didn’t need them anymore. They work really well in our new loft space. Both as a tea room space and as a place where students can choose to sleep, if needed.

We have also installed 2 single beds up there as well, on the other side.

A couple of years ago, I bought an old Venco pug mill from my friend John Edye, who has retired from making now. I cleaned it of aluminium corrosion and painted the inside with metal primer. I have use it for 2 years now and this week, I pulled it down, and cleaned it out to change clay bodies, and inspect the lining.

I was so happy to see that the wire brushing and priming that I had done previously was holding very well indeed. Nothing needed doing. So I put it all back together again and made a new batch of wood firing clay body for an up-coming workshop.

Clay making is a dusty business. I wear some OH&S clothing to minimise the dust in my hair and on my clothes. There are probably expensive versions of this stuff, but I use a garbage bag with holes cut out for my head and arms, then a theatre hair net and a standard dust mask. I have an exhaust fan with a flexible ’snorkel’ that hovers over the mixer and sucks most of the airborne dust out of the room. It works

After all the clay has been twice pugged, bagged and stored. We move all the machines out of the way and mop the floor clean, before reinstating everything as it was before and ready to go again.