Friday on my mind

Posted on 12/12/2015 by hotnsticky

Two weeks ago on Friday I delivered a kiln to Sturt Pottery and then spent the next week welding up another order and delivered it to the Galvanisers on the next Friday. That was last Friday. I spent this week welding up the next kiln order and delivered it to the galvanisers today – this Friday!

While I was up there, I picked up last weeks kiln, that had been dropped off and dipped this time last week, all in the same trip. It’s good when things work out like that. After all, it’s a 3 or 4 hour round trip up to Sydney and back, so I like to make it pay.

I swap this weeks black mild steel frame for last weeks shiny, newly galvanised one in the factory. I’m getting a head start on next years orders, so there won’t be any delay, as I know that I’m going to be very busy next year, with a lot of projects planned. So getting in early with all this intense work, is a way of banking time. So now I can take it a bit easier over Xmas and the new year, when we have a lot of guests planned to visit.

In the mean time, I also picked up a trade-back kiln. One of my kilns that has not had a lot of use, so I will do it up and offer it for sale as a 2nd hand kiln, but with a 12 months, as-new, new kiln warranty. I’d really like two get this job done before Xmas too, if I can squeeze it in.

I’m starting to feel a bit tired after all this intense work. I need a couple of days in the garden to ground me and get the vegetables back up to scratch.

It’s been so hot recently, up in the high 30’s recently. We have had to water morning and night to keep everything looking pert. It’s all I can do with all this welding to keep things alive. All the grass has dried-off and started to turn brown now. We have been lucky to have had a green vista for so long. In past years, during the dry times. The grass was all burnt off dry brown and crunchy in late spring.

Yesterday, it was so hot, that I fuelled-up and commissioned the ‘house’ fire-fighting pump for the first time this summer, and used it to wet the roof of the house with rain water to cool the house down. It works like a charm and drops the temperature by 5 degrees inside the house within minutes. Nearly all the water is collected in the roof gutters and runs back into the water tank. It is a productive way to test out the fire fighting system early in the season, and get everything back up to scratch, before it is needed in an emergency, when there is no time to waste.

For dinner I steamed a fillet of taylor and served it with freshly harvested kipfler potatoes and multi-coloured zucchinis, green, black and yellow. This was accompanied with a Japanese inspired green salad of red and green Mizuma leaves, rocket, shiso, red coral lettuce and green spring onion. Dressed with a finely sliced, filaments of roasted nori paper and a shiso dressing. I also salted some sliced cucumber and after draining, dressed it with sesame oil and some lightly roasted sesame seeds.

It is all lightly aromatic, crunchy and goes well with freshly picked red French radishes. A multicultural Australian meal, perfect for summer.

All these ingredients fresh from the garden, except the fish and the nori paper. It’s a wonderful reward for our efforts.

It’s a Busy Time of Year

Posted on 02/12/2015 by hotnsticky

I have only just delivered the last kiln off the factory floor and now I’m back in there welding up the next one. I want to get into and out of the galvanisers before Xmas, so that I can work on it over the summer break, so as to get a head start on next years orders. The galvanisers shut down for a month over the summer as does the local steel supply yard, and many other businesses as well.

I have the next frame all tacked up already. I can cut the sections and start to weld the bones of it together while the old faithful automatic hacksaw does it’s job, slowly and relentlessly.

When I made my first kiln. I cut all the steel out with a hacksaw blade by hand. It took two days. I don’t think that I’ve been so bored in all my life. When that initial kiln was sold, the first thing that I did was to spend my profits on a 4″ angle grinder and this wonderful old ‘chug-a-lug’ cast iron automatic hacksaw. It has been the most important thing that I have ever bought, with the possible exception of my home. It has worked continuously and reliably for 35 years. All I have ever had to replace are the blades, about once a year. It is such a fantastic invention. It cuts while I weld. and the angle grinder cleans up the edges.

I don’t want to get caught with no options, so I’m getting in early, as early as I can and doing all the welding and ordering of parts now. Then I will have the luxury of setting my own agenda of work and relaxation over the summer. We have relatives visiting from inter state and also from overseas, so we’ll be busy relaxing as well as working.

There a lot of veggies starting to bolt in the sudden heat, so we are try to eat them as fast as we can. i made a risotto last night with lots of garden produce. I used leeks instead of onions because that is what we have plenty of just now, and loads of fresh veggies, so much so that the result wasn’t really a risotto, as it only contained half cup of carnaroli rice, but a large bowlful of carrots, zucchinis and some mushrooms.

Veggieotto, with a little rice added. Cooked in fish stock from the bones of our dinner from a few nights ago.

We are now picking from our 3rd tree of peaces. Well protected by plastic bird netting. We get all the fruit form these trees. they are the newer low chill varieties that we have been forced to grow now. These are the third generation of peach trees that we have grown here now over the 40 years of our Post Modern Peasant Enterprise. Modern varieties of peach trees seem to have a productive life here of 15 years. The Lovely decides to make a peach cobbler for desert to follow our veggieotto.

We have also made our first large pick of young berries. Up until now, we have been eating what we picked each day, but the season is suddenly in full swing now, so we get up very early and go out to do the harvesting before it gets too hot. We spend 3/4 of an hour and pick 7 kgs in one go. They are really coming on. The lovely Lady of Household Management, Ms Janine Beeton, can’t be beat’n when it comes to household frugality. She has them all sorted, cleaned, steamed and bottled by mid morning, while I’m cutting steel. The vector of post modern peasantry and petit-capitalism.

It’s a busy time of year.

Aioli

Posted on 21/11/2015 by hotnsticky

As we have an excess of fresh garlic just at the moment. I decided to make aioli sauce as the accompaniment to the steamed fish and new potatoes that we are having for dinner.

Aioli is a very ancient form of sauce, a bit like mayonnaise, but flavoured with garlic. It’s a great addition to lots of meals. Tonight we are having fresh ‘Ling’ off the fish truck that comes up to the Highlands from the coast, 3 days a week. He arrives at 6.00am and is sold out by 1.00 or 2.00 pm. I get there just in time to get the last piece of ling and some fresh mussels.

I decide to steam the Ling with a few drops of olive oil, to stop it sticking, then add a few fresh leaves off the Kaffier lime tree on top. I deglaze with a crisp white wine and serve it with our steamed new potatoes and zucchini, picked fresh from the garden.

We have both green and yellow zucchinis at the moment. They are the first of the summer vegetables to come into full production so early on the the season. It’s still late spring. It isn’t even summer yet, but we have just had our first 40+oC day for the season. It forces us to be out watering both morning and night to keep the young summer vegetables from drying out and being set back.

I peel and then crush the cloves of one small knob of our fresh garlic, then add the juice of half a lemon, one egg yolk from our son Geordie’s chickens and whisk it all up together into a mucilarge. I then proceed to add just a few drops of olive oil to the mix, a few drops at a time while whisking with the other hand. This continues until a thick white, bulked-up consistency is achieved. It takes quite a lot of oil to bring this about.. Don’t worry if it takes a long time, just keep on adding a few more drops of the oil at a time. Don’t get frustrated and add too much in one go. To make a mayonnaise-like emulsification sauce, you need to be patient. Just add a few drops at a time and keep whisking. It will eventually emulsify.

This is a very ancient recipe, dating back into prehistory. It is to be found all over the south of Spain, France and northern Italy. It was apparently, originally, just a mix of garlic and olive oil to begin with. It was later found that the addition of a little egg yolk, stabilised the emulsion and thickened it considerably. It benefits from the addition of a little salt and some freshly ground pepper to taste.

Rick Stein has suggested that the garlic be crushed with the side of a large chef’s knife and then chopped fine, crushed again with the side of the knife and very fine chopped and worked into a paste. A rather nice craftsman-like way to do it. I like it. For those without the patience or the knife skills, a garlic press works well enough. I actually like it to be a little chunky and rustic. I also like it to have a lot of garlic in it.

Anyone can buy that anonymous, mild, made not-to-offend, finely milled, bland paste from the supermarket. It has too much salt and is loaded with preservative. What I’m making here is real life food, home grown, home made, organic, rough, chunky and strong flavoured.

However it is made, it is just right NOW at this time of year, when the garlic is so fresh and oily. Later in the year when it dries out and goes rather leathery, it just isn’t the same. At this time of year, aioli is a great accompaniment for lots of things that we grow and eat. It goes very well with fish and potatoes.

Aioli probably lasts quite a long time in the fridge, but we’ve never managed to keep it long enough to find out. It’s deliciously piquant.

We haven’t had any red meat since August, I’m starting to think that it would be nice to have a couple of lamb cutlets with aioli.

Panforte

Posted on 19/11/2015 by hotnsticky

During our open studio weekends, I made Panforte to serve to guests that stayed on for coffee. Sometimes, however, we were so busy that I didn’t get time for chat and coffee, being constantly engaged in discussing pots, glazes, forms and firing techniques at the wrapping bench. So two cakes lasted the whole weekend, instead of the usual ten minutes.

I was taught to make panforte with a very simple recipe. It isn’t really a cake, it’s something closer to a bread, but with lots of spices and a little sweetness. The ones that are commercially available here from Italy are a lot sweeter and much softer than this rather traditional version.

I suspect that there are as many different recipes for Sienna cake as there are housewives that cook it in Sienna. However, after watching a recent cooking show from Italy with interviews with some of the locals, it was teased out that in the new/modern Italian household of 2 parents and 1 child, with both parents working, there isn’t a lot of home cooking going on any more. That has been left mostly to Nona. The microwave and pre-packs reign supreme these days in modern busy households , just as they do in Australia.

So here is my variation on an old fashioned, not so sweet, rather chewy, recipe for Panforte. It’s not so surprising that I think that it is a little like a sweet kind of bread, as the name panforte means ‘bread-strong ‘. I think that the strong part refers to the fragrance and flavours of the spices?

I was originally taught to use;

1 cup of flour

1 cup of almonds

1 cup of dried fruit

and one cup of honey – So easy to remember!

What could be more wholesome, natural and simple? Well, that is what attracted me to the recipe, but I found it a little lacking in dried fruit and way too sweet for my taste. So I altered it over time, a little bit at a time, slowly arriving at the following recipe, which I currently use.

1 cup of flour

1 cup of almonds, crushed with the side of a large knife or roughly sliced

1 cup of dried apricots, roughly sliced

1 cup of glacé cherries

1 cup of tiny dried currents

1 cup of other mixed dried fruits and candied peel. I made my own dried candied peel. It keeps really well in the fridge and last for ages. see;

Fruits of the Solstice

1/4 cup of honey, which is then topped up with hot water and dissolved. I use local bush honey. We used to use our own when we had the bees. Sometimes I use Tasmanian ‘Leatherwood’ honey, as it is particularly fragrant and compliments the other spices.

There is a concoction of dried spices added to the mix, and these are not weighed or really measured. I suppose that they may have been once upon a time, but I’ve completely lost track of what that might have been.

These days I add a generous shake or small spoon full of some or all of the following;

Cinnamon powder. This is the most important, so more of this. Maybe 2 level tea spoons. Then there is powdered cloves, also important, but very strong, so a lot less is added. Maybe half to one teaspoon, then there is ginger, nutmeg and mixed spice. Mix and match as you think fit.

All the dry ingredients and spices except the honey water, are dry mixed together in a large hand made pottery mixing bowl.

As soon as the warm honey water is mixed in, stir it all together well to incorporate all the dry fruit and flour, so that it is homogenous. Do this quickly because as the mixture cools down, it starts to ‘set’ as the honey become more viscous, then it becomes harder to pour it out in the the baking ring.

I made a few stainless steel baking rings, some for my sons restaurant, and a few for us. I keep giving them away and making more. I use a ring that is about 200 mm dia and 20mm high.

Grease a baking tray and the rings. I use olive oil to avoid using butter. I like butter. No! I love butter, but I’d rather enjoy my small allocation of butter in other ways. Olive oil works well in this way and the strength of the spices masks any minimal olive flavour residue.

I sprinkle a 50/50 mixture of flour and icing sugar, mixed with some cinnamon and clove powder onto the tray and pour the soft cake mixture into the ring onto of the flour mix. Use any left over mix to sprinkle on top.

Bake for about 40 minutes at 180oC. Check if it’s done by inserting a knife. Allow it to cool on a wire rack, then wrap it up in lunch-wrap paper. It keeps for ages in the fridge, but only if you forget about it. Otherwise it gets eaten very quickly, as it is very popular.

It’s a lovely special treat that I make a couple of times a year, so as to keep it special.

Buckotto

Posted on 15/11/2015 by hotnsticky

We have had a couple of very good week ends of Open Studio, with lots of visitors and good sales. This is the best Open Studio that we have participated in. The Open Studio Trail has been operating now for about 10 years and we have participated in 5 of them. We would have been involved in more of them, but they fell on times when we we’re away or unable to take part for one reason or another . So this has been good for us to see a strong response to our domestic pots.

It has been frenetic, but very good. we are looking forward to a slightly easier and quieter time for the next little while. We have a lot of other small, deferred jobs to catch up on, as well as a kiln to finish building. It has been sitting in stasis for the past two weeks while we concentrated on the pottery.

The Lovely has been busy dealing with the new garlic. We have had it spread out to dry all over the place from in the sun on the front verandah to the kitchen floor in front of the big window. The best of it is all peeled and plaited now and hung up in the kitchen to finish drying. We have 10 plaits holding anything from 15 to 20 knobs and another equal number of knobs that were too far gone to be able to plait and they are currently stored loose in wicker baskets in the kitchen window to finish drying along with the last of the broad beans.

I love the fresh, oily, new season garlic. It just pops out of its soft skin so easily. I have been eating garlic sandwiches, made with heavy, dark rye bread. A dusting of veggie salt and freshly ground pepper and it’s all I need. There is only a month or so where it stays like this, so fresh and wet and oily. Once it dries out and the skin becomes papery, then the magic is gone and it becomes just plain ordinary garlic for the next 6 months, until it declines into its older, leathery dried out state with green shoots. This is when it is time to replant the next crop.

We save the largest and strongest bulbs for planting out for next seasons supply. These go back into the ground around about March, as soon as there is any sign of a green shoot. I usually see a few wild shoots appearing in the garden at this time. Some rogue cloves that have escaped captivity. They set the agenda, when they shoot up out of the ground, it’s time to replant the next years crop. We can still keep on eating the remainder of our stock from the kitchen plaits until it is all used up. We rarely last out the year, usually falling short by a month or two, but this year we made it right to the end by buying a plait from one of the members of our local ‘Seed Savers Group’.

We have had a few changes in the weather with a few warm days following some rain and the first of the spring crop of Safron milk-cap mushrooms (Lactarius deliciosus,) has appeared in the garden. They grow in conjunction with pine trees, and as we have some magnificent Caribbean pines growing beside our house, we get a good supply of these lovely wild mushrooms all through the year, but mainly in spring and autumn. This one may end up in a risotto for dinner.

I have recently been experimenting with making a variation on risotto using buckwheat. I bought a kilo of organically grown buckwheat and have been finding ways of using it. I originally bought it to make my own ‘soba’ noodles. However, ‘buckotto’ has turned out to be my favourite use for it.

We have plenty of beetroot, carrots, broad beans and zucchinis at the moment, so tonights dinner will be pink veggie buckotto. I make it just like any other risotto, by first slow heating some finely chopped onion in good olive oil and later adding some of our garlic. Cooking them though for some time so that they are soft, translucent and glowing, but not browned or burnt. Add a cup of the small triangular buckwheat grains to the mix and stir till coated with oil. I add a cup of white wine and add in the various sliced up vegetables in order of required cooking time, stirring often. Today, I have a pan of fish stock on the go to keep the mixture lubricated. I also have a few jars of our own preserved tomato passata left in the pantry from last summer, so I add in half a small jar of this and a slab of frozen basil pesto from the freezer.

We only have a very small freezer attached to the top of our small domestic fridge. We have chosen not to own a separate freezer to save using electrical power unnecessarily. When we preserve our summer excess from the garden we do it by cooking and vacuum sealing the produce in glass ‘Vacola” jars. Basil pesto of course, isn’t cooked, so it is one of the few things that go in the freezer. I made 7 tubs of the stuff last summer. It’s great to be able to go to the freezer and grab a chunk of distilled summer garden essence and add it to a meal so much later in the year.

I keep the dish moving, so that it won’t stick as it thickens up. it’s a beautiful, rich vegetable flavour with a creamy texture and some chewy vegetable chunks.

A great meal for a late spring evening. Ever so simple. Quick and easy and very tasty.

I believe that it is even quite healthy.

Tonight My Fingers Smell of Garlic – Again

Posted on 09/11/2015 by hotnsticky

The first of our open studio weekends is over and we were quite busy all day, each day, with only one 10 minute gap between visitors all day each day. Not quite enough time to be able to make and eat a sandwich. We had to take it in turns to eat and go to the loo.

Now that the pressure is off. It is time to lift the garlic crop for this year. As I got them in early, they were ready to be lifted and dried a couple of weeks ago. Now is the first clear space I have had to be able to get into the garden and spend a couple of hours digging over the plot, weeding and sorting them all out.

Janine had managed to get into the main garden last week and dig up the small plot that I planted out up there. I planted about 100 cloves from our larger knobs in the kitchen. A mix of all the different types that we have collected over the years. Red, white and pink varieties in both hard and soft stem types. She managed to find the time to preen them and spread them out to dry, before plaiting the largest of them and hanging them up on the kitchen wall by the wood stove chimney to finish drying. We have 3 plaits of about 15 knobs each. With another 50 smaller knobs all cleaned and dried and placed in a large colander on the kitchen bench top for immediate use over the next month or so.

While I dig the garlic, The Lovely gets stuck in at the other end of the plot, up by the patch of English cottage garden flowers that I planted for her as a surprise 2 or 3 years ago. They take a while to get established, but are flowering well now. It bit past their best, but still lovely. A very nice back-drop to our work today. At some point in the future, I am going to reverse these two garden beds and lift all the cottage garden flowering plants and move them to the vegetable end, and vice versa. This will refresh the soil and the vegetables and flowers will both benefit from the change. Janine starts to harvest the last of the broad beans. Pulling out the spent plants as she finishes stripping the last of the beans off each one. It’s nice to be able to spend this time, working together in the garden.

I bought half a dozen ‘new’, named varieties of organically grown garlic and planted them out in serried rows, down here in the Pantry Field garden. They had grown quite well, with some being obviously much stronger growers than others. I bought 3 knobs of each and planted out the individual cloves. These have now grown up into about 150 knobs of differing sizes. It would have been best if we had managed to find the time to harvest them a week or two ago. They had started to dry out and the tops had begun to lean over. Then we got so busy and it started to rain. We had 3 inches or 75 millimetres of rain last week and this was enough to reduce the dried tops to a liquid mush. The earliest varieties had lost their ‘paper’ coating and are starting to ‘burst’ or spread out. They’ll be fine for eating, but without any substantial stem. we won’t be able to plait them and hang them up. So more individual knobs for use directly from the bowl kitchen bench top.

I’m not too sure how this will affect their ‘keeping’ capacity? We’ll find out during the coming year as this hasn’t happened before. I’m glad that we have had this fine, sunny day today, combined with a day ‘off’, so that we could get the crop in and start it drying out. There is a certain sense of achievement, satisfaction and security knowing that we have to years supply of garlic safely in hand.

Some people have asked me what we do with so much garlic. Well, we eat it. We seem to get through the 200 to 300 small knobs pretty easily during the year. What we grow isn’t the largest or most presentable garlic. Not like what you might see for sale in the green grocers. But it is our own, organically home-grown produce, clean and free from any sprays, pesticides or preservatives. That is the kind of self-reliance that our enterprise here is all about, and a day ‘off’, spent in the garden is a good day indeed. This is fun for us. It doesn’t involve going out, driving anywhere, or spending any money. What more could you want?

Our friend Annabelle Sloujetté has turned up from the south coast, bearing gifts of oysters and a couple of beautiful blackfish. I steam them with some of our fresh little garlic cloves, a little olive oil, a couple of sliced large dark field mushrooms, two sliced zucchinis, some pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice. A splash of white wine finishes it off.

These fish are a really good size for blackfish, so I choose to cook them in the big rectangular copper baking pan, but it doesn’t have a lid. In the past I have used a sheet of al-foil to cover the pan on occasions, but I really don’t like to use aluminium cooking foil. It’s an environmental disaster, so we rarely use it. I decide to run down to the kiln shed and quickly make up a folded stainless steel, custom-made, lid for the pan. I’ve been meaning to do it for a long time now. So now is the time.

I choose a small piece of stainless off-cut, that is almost the right size. I measure it exactly and use the guillotine to slice off a few centimetres, I use the pan break to fold a slight return on two sides to help keep it flat when it is heated, then hand-file and smooth the edges. I measure it so that it will fit exactly between the two handles and sit snuggly on the flat rim.

It takes me 7 1/2 minutes to get it done and I’m back in the kitchen before the others have finished cleaning the new potatoes that we harvested today along with the garlic and broad beans.

I lift my hand to my face to wipe my brow after I have run back up from the workshop. Ah, Yes! I remember that smell. I have been digging and cleaning garlic all day, so tonight my fingers smell of garlic – again!

Spring and The Man for All Seasons

Posted on 06/11/2015 by hotnsticky

The broad beans that I planted before leaving for Japan have come to fruiting. They have been slow arriving, but now they are in full fruit. We have had 3 picks from them so far and there will be more, but with the increase in heat and day length, there are no more flowers, so as we pick the last beans from each plant we pull it out and add it to the compost pile.

There haven’t been quite enough of them to get tired of them yet, we have managed them quite well. I don’t think that there will be many left at the end of the season to dry for later use. only just enough to save for next years seed.

The garlic that I planted in March is wilting now and drying off, so it is time to harvest it and lay it out for drying. This will have to wait for next week, as we are flat-out busy cleaning up the pottery and setting out our pots for the Open Studio Weekends coming up. We are pretty much ready now with only minor adjustments left to do today. I did all the lighting and most of the pricing yesterday.

Next to the garlic I planted a long row of peas which The Lovely enjoyed while I was away in Japan. They are all over now, so I planted potatoes in that spot a few weeks ago. They are all starting to show their first leaves now. They went in a month late, but I was so busy when I got back that I just couldn’t do everything at once. Pot making, kiln building, wood splitting, kiln firings, studio cleaning, weeding, mowing, planting and harvesting.

I have been back a while now and just about caught up. The garden is pretty much fully planted out with the summer vegetables and we have already picked our first cucumber, zucchinis, picked our first sprigs of basil and had a couple of meals of artichokes. Janine lifted some of the earliest garlic that had self-sown on the edge of the path, a few knobs that we missed last year, that had grown into splendid plants. They are all dried, plaited and hung up next to the stove in the kitchen. It’s so nice to have fresh garlic again. I forget just how juicy and oily it is when it is this fresh. This is the first year that we have had our own garlic last the full year. We had just 2 little dried out knobs left in the colander on the kitchen bench when Janine picked that first plant.

I have managed to make progress on the big new gas kiln for Sturt Workshops. It is all panelled and bricked up now. I had my very good friend and right hand man Warren down for a few days to give me a hand, as there is just too much to do at this time of year and I’m only one man.

Warren is an amazingly creative person. So skilful at so many things. He was apprentice of the year in his trade course. For two years in a row! Then he worked as a stonemason in Canada for a while, then as a fencer on his return, a panel beater, and a potter/sculptor, this was when I first met him. He worked in the sculpture department of the National Arts School for some years and then studied horticulture and set up his own business. An amazingly creative, restless spirit.

I taught Warren in the ceramics course at The National Arts School, back in the 90’s. On the first day of the year, I started my class by getting the students to make some good, basic, pottery tools. I took them all over to the sculpture workshop, where there were woodworking and metal working tools and vices. They were encouraged to get to know how to use these simple tools, so that they could make and sharpen their own tools. A little bit of self-reliance, that I had decided to inject into the course syllabus.

I handed out some small pieces of thin stainless steel sheet and a pair of tin snips to each of the students, so that they could cut out a small kidney-shaped profile tool. By the time I had turned around, Warren had cut out a perfect kidney shape. He held it up to me and said,

“Do you mean like this”?

I said “Yes! Exactly like that. Do you want a job”!

He replied, “Maybe, it depends what it is”

We have worked together on a casual basis ever since. When I have too much work on, it’s great to get Warren down here to give me hand. Apart from being amazingly skilful, he is great fun and we laugh a lot. Working with Warren puts a spring in my step.

Having been a panel beater, Warren is excellent with sheet metal and with the State Medal in MIG welding under his belt, he is a very useful man to have in a kiln factory. He has a great eye for detail and is very careful and accurate with his hand-work skills. This in conjunction with a few years as a mason, makes him ideal at the very fine and precise type of brick laying that I do in my kilns. It’s great to have The Man for All Seasons here in the Spring.

Time For Some Fun

Posted on 25/10/2015 by hotnsticky

Last week I attended my friend Alan Parkes funeral. Alan was a good mentor, a stonemason and sculptor. He taught me how to cut and dress stone, so that I could create all the sandstone features for my home, when I built it way back in the early seventies. I still have those stone masons tools that I forged all those years ago. I have Allano’s pitching tool, that he gave to me, I am forever grateful for his kindness and support. All the other tools I have forged myself.

I have been slowly building stone retaining walls for the new pottery workshop Pavillion building. It’s been a slow process, because I have had to dig nearly all the stones out of the ground myself over the years that we have been living and gardening here. When even I make a new garden bed or make a new orchard area, I have to dig some enormous sandstone floaters out of the ground. I pile them up down at the bottom of our land, until the time is right for some more stone work.

That time is now. It’s time to have some fun and in memory of Alano I get out my skutch, point and bucket of gads. I originally made myself 10 gads, back in the seventies, but when I get my bucket of stone working tools out from the workshop, I find that I only have 5 left, I’ve lost one at a time over the intervening period, so now I only have a bare minimum of them left. The first thing that I do is make another set of 10 more. That should see me out for another 40 years of quarrying and masonry work! Just like the last lot.

I set about breaking up the big floater that I cut in half a while ago, so that I could put the citrus grove fence right through the middle of that space. The rock just happened to be smack-bang in the way, so I cut it in half and cut up the piece that was now in the way and used it to make the lower part of the stone retaining wall that I plan to finish off this weekend. Using just my small 4 lb hammer and a dozen gads, I cut it up into 4 large blocks and another half-dozen, smaller blocks. They are really enormous lumps of stone and I need to use the tractor to move them to the site. The largest is about 200 kilos. It’s longer than the 1200 mm bucket on my tractor. I have to secure it with heavy snigging chains, to make sure that it doesn’t fall out of the bucket during the bumpy ride over to the building site on the other side of the kiln shed and pottery.

It is amazing what one man can achieve with just a 2kg hammer, a dozen small gads – and a few hours!

Using crow bars, levers, rollers, the tractor and the help of my good friend and faithful retainer, Warren, we build the retaining wall. In two days, we cut and lay 20 metres of stone wall and two sets of stone stairs. It’s great fun and ever so rewarding. We get so much done working together and we manage to laugh a lot while we are at it, even though the work is physically very demanding. The Lovely Janine is here too, supporting, passing, carrying, sorting stones, getting gravel and lime in the ute, raking up, finishing the details and finally sparging and cleaning our messy lime mortar work in the afternoons, once the mortar has started to set a little. The weekend goes so fast. It’s been really tiring but also energizing to be so productive in a free and creative way. We don’t really know what we are doing, but we enjoy doing it all the same. It all goes so well. Mostly because I spent the last two days before-hand splitting up the stones and cutting and dressing those blocks, then carting then onto the site in preparation. The largest stone is 450 mm high x 300 mm deep and 1500mm. long. It takes a bit of maneuvering to get it into place, but it can’t resist the hydraulics of the tractor and two crow bars.

Even though I have used, the tractor, chain blocks, crow bars. levers, wedges and rollers and a mate to help me. My back is still telling me that I have done too much. But if I don’t do too much, then I don’t get enough done.

We finish the job and are all cleaned up, well before dark. The Lovely had picked the 2nd picking of the early pink cherries. Yum! We need to be vigilant, as the birds soon realise that they are ripening and will clean out the lot if we don’t net them. But netting will have to wait for another day. Today we are being masons, not orchardists! The Gorgeous One manages to find time during the days hectic work, to bag a good deal of the crop, so as to allow it to ripen in its own good time and mature, before the pesky birds get them all.

As it is getting dark, we come inside for hot showers, a change of clothes and a well earned beer. For dinner we have a simple light meal of cubed silken tofu with todays fresh picked, early season garlic, some finely diced spring onion fresh from the garden, finely diced fresh ginger and a drizzle of light soy sauce. This has to be one of my favourite light meals.

I am someone who benefitted greatly from the generosity and good will of Allano Parkes. He left his mark on me, and inadvertently on this small piece of land of ours. I am really quite taken by the concept of self-reliance. So being taught to be able to dig up stones and turn them into a visually pleasing and environmentally sensitive, carbon-neatral, building material is a real thrill. Apart from the occasional use of the tractor to do the heavy lifting, there were no power tools used on this job. All the cutting was done using the small 2kg hammer and gads, while all the fine dressing was done using the bitch-pick and pups as well as the skutch hammer. We ache all over from the exertion and the use of muscles that don’t get used like this very often, but when we take the time to stand back and admire our achievement at the end of the day, they are all good aches!

fond regards from the part-time mason and his masonette

Two Wood Firings in One Week

Posted on 23/10/2015 by hotnsticky

Two Wood Kiln Firings in One Week

I have decided that I can fit in one extra firing before the Southern Highlands Arts Festival – Arts Trail, Open Studios weekends on the 7th & 8th of November, then again on the 14th & 15th.

The kiln is unpacked and repacked while it is still warm.

For some unexplainable reason, I wake up just after 3 am in the morning. Or is it still very late at night? I’m not too sure, but I’m wide awake, so I get up and walk down to the pottery workshop in the dark. It is quite overcast tonight/this morning, as there are no stars to be seen up in the blackness where the sky ought to be.

It’s so pitch black and very quiet, it seems a shame to make any noise at all. I decide to only put one light on and work in the soft ambiance and stillness. I make the kindling fire from the scraps of wood that fractured off from the bigger logs as I was splitting them yesterday. I spent most of the day yesterday in cutting, splitting and then, with Janine’s help, stacking it. We stacked half of it onto the truck. A very full load without sides on the tray. I drove it down to the kiln shed, covered it with a tarp against the possibility of rain overnight.

I cut all the straight log wood into hob lengths, avoiding the branched bits. These, I cut around and leave aside for splitting into small short pieces for use at the beginning of the firing, when I start the fire on-the-floor of the firebox. This first stage of the firing gently heats the pots up from cold, but also serves to build up a pile of embers in the base of the firebox which is necessary to ignite the big logs later on in the firing process.

Every part of the tree is used. I don’t like to use branched bits for the longer hob wood, as it doesn’t split easily or well, often coming apart into horrid, sprawling, jagged pieces that are difficult shapes to stack and stoke, so I have developed a technique of spacing my chain saw cuts to get the maximum number of full length ‘hob’ wood pieces from the straight grained sections of the log and a smaller number of knotty, branched bits left in-between for use as floor wood lumps. I usually walk along the log with my metal measuring stick and mark off all the cuts with a red wax crayon. This takes a little time, but makes the cutting and sizing much faster and more accurate overall.

The kindling fire starts well and develops slowly into a full firebox of burning chunks, after 3 hours, there is enough ember built up in the lower part of the fire box, (‘the ash-pit’) on the floor, to support the fire starting off on the hobs, in the upper part of the firebox (‘on the hobs’). The long, thick pieces of wood introduced onto the ‘hobs’ from the top of the firebox, are held suspended by the brick ‘hobs’ just above the burning embers in the ash pit, placed here, they soon catch alight and start to burn fiercely. This takes the firing to another level, where the wood burns cleanly and thoroughly, allowing the temperature to rise evenly and steadily, up until it is time to begin reduction at about 1000oC.

After cutting and stacking the kiln wood yesterday, I spent the rest of the afternoon in grinding, fettling, filing, acid-etching, washing and baking the newly galvanised kiln frame for Sturt Workshops prior to etch-priming. This is all mindless dull work that I have done a hundred times before, if not more and a good time to allow my mind to settle and watch itself wander, constantly returning to the hand/arm action of simple brushing. Paint on, Paint off. I don’t need to be in a buddhist temple in Kyoto to practice mindfulness. Any place will do, but it helps to be able to make the time for it and it alone.

Although it is very early in the morning, I’m keeping myself occupied in fiddling with the very small fire in the fire box. I need to watch it carefully, as at this stage it can easily go out if it is left for any

period of time unattended. As I sit and carefully place each new small piece of wood on the pyre, I suddenly realise that it is starting to rain. No wonder that there were no stars in the sky. This is no problem for me, as I took the precaution to cover the wood outside on the truck last night. I’m using freshly split pine, which although being felled two years ago, is still damp inside when split from the log. I don’t want it to get any wetter until the firing is up to 1000oc. or more, then it won’t matter if the wood is wet and may even be of some use in creating the ‘reduction’ atmosphere in the kiln, which changes the colour of the clay bodies and glazes. Such is the odd nature of burning wood in a potter’s kiln. Pottery may seem superficially to be a simple craft activity, but there is a whole world of science, chemistry and associated technologies that need to be learnt, assimilated and internalised, so that you can then work intuitively and creatively in the medium.

In this firing I have 3 large jars and then a lot of bottles, with a few shelves of smaller domestic pots underneath. This firing isn’t very efficiently packed, but there is no easy way to get these big round jars into a more-or-less square box of a kiln chamber. That is just the way it is, so I do the best that I can with what I have to work with.

I have done this so many times, that I have judged the amount of wood needed, down to the the last half wheel barrow load. The firing proceeds smoothly and evenly right up to top temperature of 1300oC or cone 10 flat, in 16 hours. Because I started so early this morning, there is time for a hot shower and a relaxed dinner back up in the house, even a bottle of wine to celebrate. This is civilised kiln firing. Perhaps even Laid back ?

We bake a whole snapper for dinner with some freshly picked broad beans from the garden. The are perfect just now. Sweet and juicy without any starchiness at all, just the way that I love them. This is the 2nd pick and there will probably another couple before they get too big. The first few beans are eaten raw as an entre, perfect with a glass of chilled white wine. We bake a few potatoes, sweet potato, red onions and some pumpkin. Our garden feeds us very well!

I bake the fish with some mushrooms and slices of lemon and serve it dressed with a sauce of melted butter with finely chopped anchovies, capers and green olives.

It’s a tough life, but some one has to have a go at it.

Tomorrow I will start to grind, sort and clean all the pots from the last firing, spend a bit more time in the garden and add another coat of paint to the kiln frame waiting in the factory.

Never a dull moment!

fond regards from the multi-tasking Steve and Janine

Hitting the Ground Running

Posted on 16/10/2015 by hotnsticky

I’m just back from Japan, It’s been a great trip. I’ve been away since late August. I’m back just in time to discover that my friend and mentor, Allan Parkes has just died. Such an interesting and creative person.

For the first time, I decided to rent some studio space in Japan and make some work there. It was very good. I hope that I’ve learned something while I’ve been away, but one never knows. Only time will tell. I tend to take things in and let them blend and simmer for a while, then hope that something will percolate back out again in some dilute form that will enhance and extend what I already do with what I know. If nothing useful emerges, then there is nothing lost, as I really enjoyed my time there. As I alway do. I have a strong affinity for Japan, the people, the food, the creative endeavours of all those people that I have met and/or whose work I have seen in the Galleries.

I had one day to unpack and do my washing, then straight in to the pottery and kiln factory. I have a large kiln ordered, so it’s straight into welding mode. I have to earn some money. I weld up the steel frame and get it off to the galvanisers in just 4 days. While the kiln is away. I get stuck into glazing all the bisque fired pots that I left here in the pottery, before I went to Japan. So it’s glazing, decorating and kiln packing. Then wood stacking, kiln shelf grinding, cleaning and washing. Finally the kiln is packed and ready to fire.

It’s 5 o’clock in the morning and the early bird chorus is just starting. I’m down in the kiln shed firing the kiln, I like to get an early start for my firings. For some very intimate psychological/physiological reason that I don’t really understand, I seem to like to get an early start, when it’s dark and quiet and I have the whole world to myself. Well, almost. There is of course the odd rooster in the distance and the bird song. The birds seem to start calling to each other even before I’m aware that that there is any change in the light levels, but they are so much more sensitive to the natural world than I am. We have all learnt to live in an un-natural modified environment with electric lights, refrigeration, supermarkets, air con, and flat screens. I eschew most of this for the frugal comfort of home grown vegetables and a wood fire for warmth and cooking. Of course I do have electric lights and a fridge. I’m not a ludite, but I’m trying to keep my life as simple as I can, while still engaging with the modern world.

Half an hour later, I can start to see a slight lightening of the sky and instead of it being jet black, it starts to have a very pale light grey to bluish tinge to it. I’m sure that if I had to live without any modern ‘conveniences’, that I’d soon adapt to my circumstances and start to see the dawns approach, just like the birds. But at this stage I’m happy in my hybrid world, sitting on the edge of my small hamlet, with access to everything that a modern first world economy has to offer only half an hour away and I’m also happy to live here quietly and ignore most of it.

Electricity is great. We make all of our own. In fact we make about 3 times more than we use, and sell the excess 2/3rds into the grid for money. Having fresh drinking water on tap is also a great thing. We catch all our own rain water from our roof and store it for later use. Hot water on tap has to be the greatest luxury ever invented. I consider it the basic standard of civilisation. If you have hot water, you probably have peace and stability. We make our own hot water from a combination of solar panels and a boiler fitted into the back of our wood fired kitchen stove. We also own a fridge, a small one, but we don’t own a freezer, even though we have a large kitchen garden and could find a use for one. We thought about it and decided against it, as it uses too much electricity. We always have something fresh to pick and eat from the garden. We eat what is in season in the garden, what we have over, we vacuum preserve it in ‘Vacola’ jars and store it away in the pantry.

I’m perfectly aware that the way we live is both very hard work and a great luxury. We are in control of most aspects of our life and that is our greatest luxury. However, Just like everyone else living in a capitalist economy, we have to earn money to pay the bills that constantly accrue. Such things as Council rates, insurance, registration, taxes etc. There are lots of once-off bills that occur throughout the year, but add up to be our major expenses over-all. As we don’t have conventional jobs, cash flow can sometimes be a problem, but we manage by living quite frugally. Luckily, most of the things in life that we aspire to can’t be bought for cash, but are earned through hard graft and personal effort.

This wood firing will be the last that we can fit in before the Southern Highlands Arts Festival Open Studio Weekends, that are slated for the first two weekends in November. It gives us a couple of weeks to unpack the kiln and then fettle and grind all the pots. With any luck, we should have just enough time to unpack the kiln, then clean up the studio ready for the opening.

Best wishes from Steve who is glad to be back home again and hitting the ground running

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