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!
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.
We are in the final preparation for the Southern Highlands Open Studios Arts Trail. We will be open on the first two weekends of November. We will also be part of the Australian Ceramics Assn Open Studios event at the same time.
We are doing the last few firings now and spending a bit of time fettling and polishing all the glazed pots. This last week I have been cleaning and grinding the pots form my last Wood kiln firing. From now on it will be too hot, dry and therefore dangerous to fire the wood fired kiln until next autumn. All of our firings from now on will only be in the electric kiln fired using our 100% self generated solar energy, mostly from our PV panels but with a little bit of back up from our lithium batteries. In this way we can fire on a combination of todays sunshine and some of yesterdays stored sunshine as well.
When the battery is full and we are not firing the kilns. I charge up the electric cars. No point in selling it to the grid for next to nothing if I can use it in some way myself. Once both the cars are charged, I charge up the ride on mower and the power tools etc.
This week I have been doing a bit of ‘kintsugi’ repair on a few wood fired pots that got a little damage in the kiln, a couple of them ‘kissed’ in the firing. One was knocked over by a stray log during stoking, and another got so much wood ash deposit on the fire face that it ran down and stuck it to its wadding. All the usual little mishaps that befall pots in the ‘Zone of Death’. That part of the setting at the very front of the wood fired kiln chamber where the most beautiful pots are created, but are also most vulnerable to damage. I am capable of make some very spectacular shards!
I love it when the translucent white porcelain gets so heavily reduced that it turns black with carbon inclusion. This contrasts so well with the delicate pale, but intense blue of the limpid blue celadon. Alas, fine thin porcelain doesn’t enjoy the intense conditions in the front of the kiln and often dunts (cracks). I’m most happy when I can get a good piece out of the firing whole and in good condition. However, such pots are rare.
In the piece above. It looks as if you can see my finger prints where I have dipped a glaze, but in fact, these white marks are the fine white porcelain body showing through where the little balls of wadding were placed around the foot to keep it up off the kiln shelf during firing. The naturally deposit ash glaze on the front of the pot had started run, but luckily, it hasn’t glued the bowl to the shelf. Really good porcelain pots are a rarity from this part of the kiln.
‘Kintsugi’ gold leaf repair is a way of restoring a beautiful, but slightly damaged pot back to full radiance. I think that if a good pot is damaged in the fire that made it so lovely in the first instance, then it’s worth giving it a bit of love and TLC to make it even more beautiful. I lavish a lot of effort, skill and time into retrieving them from the scrap bench and repairing these sensitive and beautiful items, bringing them back to life. Some times gluing a broken or chipped piece back together, and at other times actually rebuilding a bit of the surface that is missing. In this way I bring them back to life and give them an honourable new existence. They are even more precious then, than they were if they had come from the kiln undamaged. I am recognising their potential beauty and honouring it. In this slow, patient application of time and effort they become more special to me.
These porcelain bowls are absolutely white, but one of them have such a high degree of carbon fused into their surface during the reduction cycle, that it appears to be black. But when you look inside the bowl, it is glazed with a delicate blue celadon. I love this dramatic contrast of black and pale blue! The white bowl above has so much ash glaze built up on the fire face of the bowl that the ash began to run down and glue the bowl to the kiln shelf, running down over the wadding and making a fluid pool of ash glaze on the shelf. Tragically, I broke part of the foot off trying to extricate it from the glassy mess. I built up the missing part of the foot, back to its original form with the kintsugi technique and finishing it with 24 karat gold. All three of these bowls above, are very translucent.
Besides the translucent, white porcelain which I have reduced to matt black with carbon inclusion. (my way of permanently removing carbon from the atmosphere. Permanent carbon sequestration!) Besides these delicate porcelain bowls, I have also been firing some more robust stoneware bodies that I have made. These bodies have a much better survival rate in the ‘Zone of Death’, but still get the occasional chips or ‘kiss’ marking that need some delicate attention.
Each of these ‘rougher’ pieces has their own particular charm and character. I like them all equally.
I hope to see you at some time over the first two weekends in November. You can check them out for yourself.
The Southern Highlands Arts Trail for 2025 kicks off in just 3 weeks. We will be open on the first two weekends in November 1st & 2nd, then the 8th & 9th of November.
We will be open all days from 10 til 4pm, but are happy to open on any day during the 2 week period if you let us know that you are coming. We live here. We’ll be here every day working in the pottery or gardens.
We are recently returned from Western Australia, where we were taking part in the Australian Ceramics Triennial. I was there to present a paper on how to reduce carbon pollution from our (potters) kiln chimneys. I’ve spent a couple of years researching, building and testing a scrubber for the top of my kiln chimney, to minimise the release of PM2.5 carbon particles, that are a result of the combustion of carbon fuels.
We decided that if we were to travel so far for this event, then apart from purchasing carbon credit off-sets for the flights, we should make the most of our time away and go down to Margaret River and have a look around, and possibly taste some wines. So we did.
I discovered the best chardonnay that I have ever tasted in my life. The Chardonnay from ‘Pierro’ vineyard in Margret River. Really deep, dry, rich, fragrant, and lasting flavour. Only a slight hint of sweetness. Highly recommended for a tasting if you are ever down there. $117 per bottle, but even $5 just to taste it! A once in a life time experience.
I’m perfectly ready to accept that there are better chardonnays out there. I see them for sale in posh catalogues, costing even more, but I’ll never know, as I never buy wines anywhere near $100 per bottle – til now. I really enjoyed it. But that was it. Never again. As I said. A once in a lifetime experience. So glad that I called in. I’d never heard of them previously. A small producer, unirrigated, crop-thinned, hand picked, wild yeast, a year in small French oak sitting on lees. Perfect!
My favourite chardonnay up until now, and will continue to be, into the future, is Bowen Estate Chardonnay from the Coonawarra. Beautifully dry, well balanced, classic chardonnay fragrance, lingering finish, and a lot more approachable and affordable at $25. But still kept only for special meals and occasions.
While there we watched the sun set over the ocean in the West. Saw lots of wild flowers and visited two excellent museums. It was a full trip.
At the conference, we saw and heard a lot of presentations and demonstrations. A few duds, some really excellent. Something for everyone and every taste and interest. In fact, so much going on that it was impossible to see and hear everything, as there was always too much to choose from and some programming conflicts of my choices, meant that I missed a few things while watching others. Not a bad thing.
I really enjoyed watching, Ruth Ju-Shih Li, intermittently, over 3 days, create an amazing porcelain hand built sculpture as a performance and then dissolve it back into sludge with water.
I had to think long and hard before I decided to commit the crime of flying to the other side of Australia. Such a lot of carbon debt! I did however choose to buy carbon off-set credits to make some gesture towards minimising the damage. I support ‘Green Fleet’ for this purpose. I’m not advocating or recommending this organisation. This is not an advert. I don’t do that. But if you are unfamiliar with the concept of purchasing carbon credits to off-set some of your personal global warming damage. Maybe you could do an internet search and see what is involved.
In the end I did decide to go to Fremantle, as I was offered the chance to speak about my research on minimising the PM 2.5 carbon particulates from kiln chimneys. Something no one else is prosecuting at the current time. It doesn’t appear on anybody’s radar currently, but there is a mass of information to be found if you look. Most of it quite disturbing. In some ways, presenting this lecture is in itself an act of promoting carbon minimisation. I also offered to present a second paper to the conference on the use of solar power with battery back-up as a low carbon means of firing ceramics, but it was politely declined. No real interest within the committee it seems.
Oh Boy! I read in the news today… (Thank you John Lennon.) About the current average cost to each household in Australia for their energy bill. It currently stands at $5,800 pa. Janine and I have made an effort to minimise our energy bills. Particularly our carbon related energy consumption. We run a low energy household, and have had solar power installed since 2007. We haven’t paid an electricity bill since then. Since the big fire in 2019, everything that we had to replace was carefully considered and was always electric. So now we only spend $400 a year to put petrol in our plug-in hybrid car, and $150 a year to buy petrol for the mower, chainsaws and fire fighting pumps. Thats just 10% of the national average. I’m proud of that.
In Fremantle, we stayed with someone who told me that when his two daughters were still at home, he was paying $350 per day for electricity! there was a swimming pool involved I understand.
When we put solar on our roof, we essentially paid our lifetime electricity bills all at once in advance. We didn’t choose to do it to save money. We were very concerned about the future with global heating and the next few generations. As it turned out, we have saved a small fortune, going on current national average power bills..
I recently saw in a supermarket advertising magazine/brochure, that you can now buy a 10 kW battery and 6.5 kW of Solar PV for $7,000. Or even better, 20kw battery with 6.5kw of PV for $8500.
That is so incredibly cheap!
Caution! if something is too good to be true…..
But certainly worth looking into. Please exercise due diligence.
I am not recommending this product. I have no allegiance to this supermarket and I am not in receipt of any payment or commission for mentioning it. I don’t do that. I just think that it might be worth a very severe, and deep investigation, because it just might be OK.
Don’t waste your money. Ask around, search out reviews and customer experiences. get yourself informed. I’m a bit sceptical about the price. However, it just might be a good deal?
Back home our garden is flourishing, as our lovely neighbour Tina has been watering things on the hot and dry windy days. So many plants have burst into flower in our absence, as they were just buds when we left.
The veggie garden is still very productive. Fish and parsnip chips with a Japanese inspired cabbage salad. Oka-nomiyaki, an Australian version of Japanese cabbage pancake. Baked mixed vegetables etc.
I just planted out the first few tomatoes seedlings. It’s still a little bit early, but I like to get an early start. It doesn’t always work out well, but worth a try, to get a ripe red tomatoes before Xmas. Last year, my early plantings all ended up shrivelled by a late frost. Such is life! It doesn’t stop me trying. A sure fire way to know that it’s the right time is when I see the wild, self-sown seeds start to pop up. But that will be another month yet.
I’ve just finished reading two books on AI. I thought that I should get myself informed in some small way, as it is coming fast and we are told will be part of almost everything that we do in no time at all. When I was working in Korea back in April/May, everyone in my circle was using it in some way. Most on their phones as recreation, others having to take courses as part of their workplace training. Some as a requirement of their studies. It was everywhere in my environment, daily experiences and exchanges with my cohort. I’m not that interested in using it. I even have ’siri’ switched off. But sure enough, I will probably be forced to engage with it at some time, – probably sooner than I imagine. I’m not a Luddite, but I’m not rushing in either. It will come soon enough, or so I’m told. I can’t see it helping me to pack the kiln, or weed the vegetables!
Richard Susskind has spent his entire life working on AI. From his Doctorate on AI at Oxford in 1980 right up until the present time, it has been his complete lifes focus. He expresses some caution, but overall, I got the impression that he is pretty ‘gung-ho’ about its potential and trajectory. As someone who has been completely immersed in its development, he feels that any shortcomings can and will be managed and overcome to make it the servant of humanity.
Harari on the other hand, as a scholar of the history of information technology. He also received his PhD from Oxford. He is quite sceptical and is very cautious about what might happen. He is not involved in any AI development. He simply looks at what has happened in the past with the development and implementation of past information technologies.
His book takes us on a long journey from the stone-age through the Bible, the witch hunts to Stalinism and on to modern popularism, and how every new technology has been coopted for individual gain, power and profit.
After reading Susskind I was a little better informed, but still perplexed. After reading Harari, I’m not exactly scared, but certainly concerned. I am at least better informed. I didn’t sit down and read them cover to cover. I read them chapter by chapter, one or two each evening. I’d rather be outside gardening if the weather is nice, or inside potting when it’s not, as these are the things that bring me the greatest pleasure. The luxury of reading is an after-dinner activity, where it has to compete with sowing patches on my worn out clothes, or watching the idiot box, on the rare occasion when there is something worth watching. So it’s taken me a month to read them both, and over that time, my attention has fallen on various articles in the news, concerning AI.
Yesterday, I read that Australian tech billionaire, Scott Farquhar wants unfettered access to all copyright material free of charge to train AI Large Language Models. He claims that AI will deliver $115 billion in productivity gains. If it does, which I’m sceptical about. That money certainly wont be going to any person whose creative copyright was stolen to train them. It will be completely swallowed by the tech billionaires, who will progress to Gazillionaires and we’ll all be charged to access our own material and any supposed benefit that might accrue.
I also read that $1.5 billion is being invested every day in AI development. Those investors are going to want their money back with interest. AI access is going to be very expensive and will be embedded in everything that we do and purchase.
I recently read an interview with Demis Hassabis. Sir Demis is a British artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur. He is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Google DeepMind and a UK Government AI Adviser. He, as an AI developer is totally sucked in by the hype that he is creating. Of course, he is making a motza out of it too – no surprises there. He is claiming that it will be ten times more productive than the industrial revolution and 10 time faster, plus, everyone will be getting rich and having time off etc etc. Isn’t it amazing how these very clever blokes. and let there be no doubt about it, they are ever so bright. How can they be so stupid with a capitol S! Hassabis and Farquhar are talking like simpletons (with a capitol S). None of their claims are likely to come to fruition in the way that they state. I’m not very clever, but I can smell bull s**t a mile off. Many people will be worse off when they loose their jobs.
There is already sufficient wealth in the world for everyone to be well fed, comfortable, safe and with access to effective health care, but as Harari points out, corruption, nepotism and greed mean that 70% of the available wealth is all tied up in pointless and excessive accumulation of useless assets like super yachts, personal jumbos, spare mansions in multiple countries etc. etc. Non-productive, excessive consumption, for no good reason – other than excessive greed and stupidity. (with a capitol S)
Hassabis claims, “we should be in a world of what I sometimes call radical abundance. He paints a picture of medical advances, room-temperature superconductors, nuclear fusion, advances in materials, mathematics. It should lead to incredible productivity and therefore prosperity for society. We should be in an amazing world of abundance for maybe the first time in human history.”
He uses the word ‘should’ a lot. But it won’t turn out like he is suggesting! No good will come of this over-hyping of AI. There will still be a four year waiting list for an operation in NSW, There will still be genocide in Gaza and senseless slaughter in Ukraine. They should know better! They should be talking about all the unemployment that is going to come along with it. How will this prosper society?
I heartily recommend Yuval Noah Harari’s book “Nexus”.
On a brighter note;
In Korea, they have these giant TV screens on the side of major roads used for advertising, just like we have static bill boards here.
I got these images sent to me from 2 different friends a few days apart. I can see that it is me on a giant TV screen on the side of the freeway in Korea. I can’t read it, but I know the image. Its from the TV documentary made about my work in Korea during my recent trip there. I’m assuming that it is an add for the doco?
It’s all about my work researching low emissions technology in wood kiln firings, and introducing it to potters, research institutions and universities, to try and clean up the atmosphere, and make the world a better place. Potters aren’t responsible for very much of the atmospheric pollution in the world on a per capita percentage basis, cleaner cars and industrial processes will make a much bigger impact, but every little bit helps. Potters must play their part. I’m doing my bit – without AI.
The main reason for potters and ceramic institutions being interested in my work, is because there is a substantial local blow-back when people see a kiln chimney belching out black smoke. So they quite rightly ask, why are they still allowed to be so filthy and polluting? Change is coming, albeit slowly. A World-Wide the ban on diesel engined vehicles starts to come in, in some countries in 2035, and by most by 2050.
Once coal burning power stations are all closed down, and these broad, society wide changes are introduced. I predict that it will be impossible for a potter to belch out black smoke and get away with it. There will be legislation to severely limit carbon particulate emissions. Potters need to be engaging with this issue now, so that when the time comes, we can show that we can, if not eliminate, then at least severely limit any PM 2.5’s emitted from our chimneys.
It’s going to be a big challenge, and might not prove to be even possible, but the sooner we start, the sooner we will get to a good workable and hopefully affordable solution. We have about 10 years.
It’s been raining again quite heavily. We now have 4 different little streams flowing across our land, where the dams overflow, and the front lawn is under 25mm of water, like a slow moving shallow lake gently flowing across our kitchen vista.
We had 65mm of rain at one point. I thought about what to do for a while and came to the conclusion that it was probably best if I decided to do all those glaze tests that I had been meaning to do for a while. I certainly didn’t want to do any outside work. So I spent a day rolling out slabs and pressing out grid-tiles from my standard plaster grid-tile mould. This ensures that all my test tiles are the same size and shape, so that I can compare them at any time with tests made years before if needed. Tragically, I lost 3,000 glaze tests in the fire, so I’m starting again.
Weighing out glaze tests can be quite boring, especially when it goes on for days. However, it keeps me gainfully employed in the warm and dry pottery studio. I put on a CD while I work. It takes more than the length of a CD to fill one test tile with the infinitesimally small gradations of ingredients in the logical progression of the recipe. Each tile is 8 x 4 squares = 32 weighings and recordings.That’s 288 tests made in this sitting. Enough!
When I was doing my PhD, I did every test in triplicate, so that I could fine them in oxidation, then reduction and also in the wood fired kiln. As each kiln gives its own variation to the test. Having done that very thorough exploration, I’m over it and these days I only make the one series of tests, and fire them in the kiln that I think will deliver what I’m looking for.
It fills 10 pages of my glaze note book this time around. I have to keep detailed records of what I do and why I’m thinking that it might be a good idea. Sometimes, it takes so long to get the firings done at the temperature that I’m imaging will be best and in the atmosphere that I want, and in the kiln that will give me those ideal conditions, so that If I don’t write everything down in detail, then I can forget what I was thinking and why I went to all the trouble. Hopefully, it will help me to understand both the results and more about myself in a few weeks time, when they are all fired, and I can decode the results!
Each tiles takes about one hour to complete. After two days of this, I’m pleased to do the last one – for the time being
When there comes a break in the rain, I get out and pick vegetables for dinner. This time is leaks, broccoli, Brussel sprouts and carrots. I’m planning baked veggies with a mustard infused béchamel source for dinner. I make a quick and warming lunch of pasta. I tried to steal the spaghetti from the supermarket, but the female security guard saw me and I couldn’t get pasta!
🙂
We decided to try is years cider with dinner. We made this batch of cider back on the 11th of February and bottled it on the 11th of April. So now it has had 4 months to settle down. It will be good to see how it has turned out.
Janine thought that we should do a vertical tasting of the last 3 vintages. What a good idea!
As we still have a few bottles of the 2012 vintage. This was the last vintage from the aged 40 year old apple trees in the previous orchard. From 2012 onwards there was a severe drought, so intense that we didn’t get to harvest any apples from 2012 through until the fire in 2019. So no cider was made. In 2015, our friend Val had a good crop of apples on her trees in ‘Lagan’, 2 hours drive, south of here, so she drove up a couple of washing baskets full of her apples. We were able to make a small batch of cider from those apples. We re-planted a new orchard in 2020 with different varieties of apples.
We opened 3 bottles to see and compare the difference. The older 2012 vintage was still very lively with good spritz, but a darker colour from its age, more akin to a beer in colour. It has a medium nose of sultry notes and a good firm cider flavour, just as we are used to. Completely dry on the finish. The 2015 from Val’s apples is medium in colour and flavour, and similar to above.
The 2025 is very pale with floral notes, a delicate palette and a dry finish, however, not very effervescent, because, as it is the first vintage from all the new apple trees in the new orchard, all planted since the fire, and this being the first year that we had a decent crop. I made the decision to cut the amount of sugar added at bottling, to ensure that there wasn’t too much pressure in the bottles. I don’t want to experience any exploding bottles.
We make a completely ’natural’ cider here from our organic orchard apples. Nothing added at all except yeast. I have always used Moet and Chandon champagne yeast, as it has alway worked well for us. Back in the 70’s, you couldn’t buy cider yeast here in Australia, so i chose champagne yeast, as it is closest to what we wanted to make – a sparkling cider. These days I can buy any number of cider yeasts form the brewers supplies shop, but I stick with what works.
I always leave the cider in the fermenter for 2 months to make sure that it has completely fermented out all the available sugars and is ‘dry’. Over the past 4 decades, I learnt to add one spoonful of white sugar to each bottle at bottling. This is the standard champagne bottling technique. This is to allow it to re-ferment, just enough to make a sparkling cider. Because these are all new trees and therefore an unknown fruit. I played it safe, and only added half a spoonful of sugar at this first bottling. So this batch has only a gentle spritz, but this is better than too much.
After this test run, next year I’ll be brave enough to add the full amount of sugar.
I’ve never been brave enough to go with the wild ferment of naturally present yeasts that are on the skins of the fruit. When we had a small vineyard of 100 cabernet and 30 shiraz vines. I tried making one vintage of a macerated, whole bunch ferment. The wild yeast that was dominant on the skins at that time was very vigorous and resulted in a rather unpleasant distasteful wine. I didn’t like it at all and threw the whole lot out. So I lost a whole vintage. it’s nothing to do with money. It’s all about the investment of time and effort, and the expectation that there will be something interesting and delicious at the end, even if the amount is very small. For instance, we only make 30 to 36 bottle of cider each year, just enough to fill one fermenter. It’s enough.
Nothing is perfect, nothing is ever finished and nothing lasts. Good cider doesn’t.
As I gaze out from the kitchen window across to the newly mown orchard with the chickens wandering about scratching and pecking, I can’t help but be overcome, albeit very briefly, with a warm glowing sense of achievement and happiness. What a beautiful sight. It’s a sunny day and everything is looking good.
It’s still sometimes hard to believe that all this is ours. I’ve somehow forgotten the 5 years of stress, anxiety, blood, stitches and pain. I’m very pleased that it is all over – more or less! There is the beautiful new pottery shed in all its fire resistant glory, with its sandstock brick facade, re-cycled iron cladding, and fire-fighting spray system on the wall facing West, all newly risen from the ashes like a Phoenix, (yet again) and in the distance, the repaired and partially re-built functional barn. It has all come together now. We are almost finished with the rebuilding work. There will always be more to do, but the list all fits on one page now. In recent memory, it was so long that I didn’t even want to think about it. I was just plodding along day by day, completely focussed, dealing with the most pressing emergency repair/replace/removal jobs.
Isn’t it amazing how a little bit of balmy weather and some flowers can lift your spirits. This past weekend was glorious. We have just come out from 2 weeks of wet and drizzly weather with intermittent torrential down pours. Which filled all the dams, and we are warned of another week of rain coming in the forecasts. Winter is coming to an end and I can sense it in the colour of the grass brightening, greening and starting to regrow. Hence the recent mowing of the orchards. I spent the weekend in the vegetable garden, which was looking somewhat neglected and dowdy. But the sudden appearance of bright sunshine and warm weather made me want to get out there and get stuck into some serious weeding, strimming and composting. Lunch was a bowl of nourishingly warm miso soup and a bowl of silken tofu, served with diced ginger root, garlic, green onion and dressed with a little soy sauce.
I managed to fill 5 or 7 wheelbarrow loads of pulled weeds on Saturday, such a lot of bending and time spent down on my knees trowling, forking and winkling out the more stubborn woody weeds. Although I ached afterwards from the effort, it was so rewarding that I was straight back into it again on Sunday. After mulching the freshly weeded beds, I planted out seeds and some seedlings. Lettuce, rocket, beetroot, fennel, chard, spinach and celery. All things that are cold tolerant and wont mind if the coming cold spell reaches down to zero overnight. The seeds will still germinate in the coming warm weather.
I won’t be planting out tomatoes for another few weeks, maybe this time next month? and even then I may have to cover them with some clear plastic as a sort of temporary closh for the first few weeks. I do this each spring as a way of getting an early tomato before Xmas. Last year I did the planting and then left for my work in Korea. So I wasn’t home to cover them when the cold snap came and frosted them off. Janine, who had stayed home, dutifully went out to the nursery/garden centre and bought some more punnets to get things going again.
Tomato seeds can be planted into punnets or trays, in a warm sheltered spot in late June or July, or even now, so that they are big enough to replant in mid to late September. Speaking of tomatoes reminds me to mention that although I had written about picking the last of the tomatoes last month. I showed a picture of 3 green tomatoes and a few red ones, well, the red ones tasted great and those 3 green ones did eventually ripen in the kitchen and we cooked them up with our morning eggs for breakfast last week. BUT, Amazingly, while weeding, I found a stray, self-sown, tomato plant that had survived under a dense cover of fennel. So we now have the last ripe tomato picked in Mid August. That has to be a record for us!
The first asparagus spears have started to appear, so our cooked breakfasts will start to take on more variety. We also have a few bright red Flanders poppies starting to flower. There are a multitude of wild, self-sown, poppy plants all through the garden beds. I planted them once, way back in the 70’s, because I like them so much. They are so bright and cheerful. I’m not so keen on the big blousy doubles. I just love the intensity of the single red.
Janine has decided that she doesn’t want the youngberry canes growing where they are anymore. They’ve been there since the 70’s, and have gone a bit feral in recent years. So I have started the process of digging them out and transplanting them over into the vegetable garden, where they will be under permanent netting. Where they are now requires us to build a plastic polypipe hoop structures over them each summer and drape netting over that to keep the birds out. It should be easier to maintain them in there. There was also an issue of rogue seeds falling and germinating in among the cane patch, some of these germinated and grew up into spiky/prickly versions of their former selves. So a total clean out is in order. I’m being very careful to only select the ‘bald’ canes for transplanting. I have chosen to place them right at the end of the bed for easy access and continuing maintenance. I will create a second cane patch at the end of the parallel bed when I get the time. Maybe next week? During the cold days I will be spending more time indoors in the pottery preparing for the next wood firing.
Today the weather has turned cold. The wind has a bitter finger-chilling edge to it. Suddenly, I have no further interest in getting out there and finishing off the weeding. There is still so much to do out there, but I’m very content with what I got done over that glorious weekend of still, warm sunshine. Promise of the warmer weather to come. Roll on spring.
Don’t read on unless you want to learn something about clay.
Janine and I have been teaching weekend workshops these last couple of weeks, and all of the preparation that goes into that to make sure that everything runs smoothly keeps us very busy. The whole exercise takes us 5 weeks in total. However, there is still time for other fun things like the garden, chickens and cooking
Over the week in between the two weekend workshops, I re-cycled all the clay from failed and re-cycled practice pieces that had made their way into the clay room to be stiffened up in the plaster basins. I have 5 large plaster tubs sitting in the direct light of the North facing window, this keeps them dry and ready for use, most of the time. Plaster saturates quite quickly if thin slip is poured into them, but they cope very well with soft plastic slumped pots that just need stiffening up. 20 mins on each side on a dry plaster batt, is all they need and it’s well and truely ready to wedge up and use again.
At the end of the workshop, I get everyone to collect all the trimmings, turnings, scraped-off batt bases and thick slurry from their throwing water tub, and pour it all into a tall 20 litre bucket. 8 potters can fill it up pretty quickly. I let it sit and soak for a day or two, to make sure everything is equally softened, I like to get it to a thick and creamy consistency, not unlike Greek yoghurt – with some lumps.
I then transfer it all onto the plaster drying tubs. It takes 3 days to get stiff enough to lift it out and stand it up. This allows more air to circulate around the soft, barely plastic clay, so as to dry it out faster. The plaster basins then need a few days in the sun to dry out again. When we do back to back weekend workshops, the plaster does get saturated and ‘tired’! However, it always recovers with a few days of sunshine.
Once stiff enough, I put it back through the pug mill, extrude it and bag it ready for re-use. It’s easy mindless work. However, I say that in the full knowledge that it is only so if you already know exactly what you are doing and have done a lot of it before. There are so many little signs and issues that you need to know and be aware of to understand about pug mills and recycling clay. The joys and sorrows of owning a pug mill!
The clay can’t be either too soft or too hard, or the mechanism of the pug mill won’t work. A pug mill is in essence, a long tube with an Archimedes spiral inside. This spiral blade pushes the clay through the barrel. Some parts of the spiral at the beginning are removed to make the spiral into a series of spiralled chopping blades. This chops up the clay, mixing both hard and soft parts evenly, then the later, complete spiral section of the auger pushes and compresses the clay out the other end. Some of the better pug mills have a screen or screens half way along the barrel so that the clay is pushed through the mesh and comes out the other side as clay spaghetti. This exposes any trapped air bubbles which are then sucked out of the pug mill barrel by a vacuum pump, before the clay is recompressed and continues along the barrel.
There can’t be any little bone dry edges that have dried out too far. They are rock hard and dry and will clog up the vacuum screens. I have to constantly check when running my fingers through the thick slurry, that there are no small tools, profiles, kidney shapes, or chamois strips left behind by my students. Any of these will grind the exercise to a rapid halt. Requiring the pug mill to be stripped down, dismantled, cleaned, the offending ‘rubbish’ removed, then checked and rebuilt. It’s the best part of a full days job to to a thorough clean out. If it’s only a chamois, sometimes, I can get away with just removing the blocked vacuum screens, cleaning them only and reassembling. This is still a good hour or so.
In the picture above, the orange vertical plate on the side of the blue pug mill barrel, half way along the barrel is where the vacuum screens are located and can be removed for cleaning. The white lid on top of the barrel is where the vacuum chamber sucks out the air. The vacuum pump is located in a box slung underneath the pug mill trolley, which is on castors for easy manoeuvring.
So far, I’ve been very diligent in checking all the recycled clay pretty thoroughly, so I haven’t had any ‘accidental’ issues in the last few years. I did discover, quite early on that the new pottery shed, with its north orientated, solar passive design, does get a lot of direct sunlight in onto the clay processing area in mid winter. I’ve learn’t from hard experience that direct sunlight like this can cause the pug mill barrel to heat up and sweat moisture out of the clay on one side, which then condenses and trickles down to the bottom of the barrel. The end result is dry hard clay in one part and slurry in another. The dry, very stiff nuggets of hard clay get forced onto the fine mesh of the vacuum screens and clog it up. The rheological nature of the thin wet slurry in the other part of the barrel doesn’t have the cohesive strength to force the hard clay through. A complete strip down is required. This is a lesson that I learnt the hard way.
Rheology is a very interesting subject in itself. Clay can be either too soft or too hard to stick together and be ‘worked’ or shaped successfully. There are limits called ‘Atterberg’ limits that have been determined, which predict the upper and lower limits of water content in clay. If too wet, it just sloshes around and won’t hold a shape, when too dry, it is just crumbly granules. We need the ‘Goldie Locks’ range for our clays to ‘work’ successfully. For pressure extruding the range is somewhere between 17% and 60%,. That’s such a huge range. See graph. For pugging, it needs to be in a narrower range of 20% to 30%. depending on the inherent plasticity and texture of the clay body. For throwing clay on the potters wheel, it is often closer to 20 to 22%. I have found in practice over the decades that my wrists have their own personal Atterberg limit of around 25% water content or even a little bit softer rather than stiffer.
Some people say that you should work to your strengths. I think the opposite, I work to my weakest point, and as that is my ancient wrists. I have adjusted my clay body recipes over time to include more very fine plastic particles, slightly more course non-plastics and more fine sand. This combination allows me to make softer clay mixtures that are still easy to pug and easy to throw on the wheel when very soft. I am limited by what is still available on the market here. So many materials that we used to be able to get have been removed from the market, as the Australian companies that own clay mines were purchased by multinational players who shut them down to force us to buy their imported products.
Luckily, I was trained in the 60’s and 70’s when clay technology was still taught in Art School. I even went on to teach it myself for a few decades. So, I can develop and test my own clay body recipes. A skill soon to be completely lost, as us oldies retire and die out. I can still obtain Australian mined and milled ceramic materials from NSW, Vic and Qld, but the options are constantly diminishing. When I have been shown commercial plastic clay bodies over the years, I have always found them to be far too stiff for my wrists to feel comfortable with. Possibly because of a lifetime of damage due to hard work with my arms, wrists and hands?
So dry lumps of clay on the pug mill screens stops everything in it’s tracks, until the screens are removed and cleaned, and this can be a big job, depending on the maker and model of the pug mill. We are lucky here in Australia to have the ‘Venco’ company, who under the direction and vision of Geoff Hill, manufactured pottery equipment here since the 70’s. His version of ‘Harry Davis’s, genius design’ of vacuum pug mill was an excellent piece of machinery. The smaller, cheaper, models require that the entire machine be diss-assembled to get to the singular screen. However, the larger, and more expensive models are designed so that the screens are accessible from the outside of the barrel and can be accessed directly for cleaning.
So now I have learnt to keep my pug mills covered with silver insulation foil when not in use, and this has solved the condensation problem. There is always something new to learn, even after 50 years!
Once pugged and bagged, It’s not the end. Good clay that has been well made needs to be nurtured a little. Clay is alive, in the sense that it contains live microbes, or should if you want it to develop the best possible plasticity. We live in the bush here in Balmoral Village. There are few Government services. There is no Town Water Supply available. So we have to collect rain water in dams and water tanks. Water stored in the ground has more bacteria live organisms than Chlorinated and sterilised city water. My clean rain water will allow the naturally present bacteria and other organisms to grow and develop in the clay. This might sound shocking, but it is just natural. Clay ‘ages’ as the organic action develops between the clay mineral particles. The water is drawn closer to the surface of the fragments and the air is slowly excluded and passed to the surface by capillary attraction. In this slow gentle way, clay develops its full plasticity. It is very noticeable after say 3 months. But a year is better! Of course, no-one in their right mind would make clay and then not use it for 3 months! Would they??? Yes muggins does. I have stored and aged porcelain bodies up to 15 years.
There is a distinct difference in the clay after a period of ageing. Clay body made with chlorinated water inhibits the natural growth and ageing, so does not develop the same plasticity.
In the old pottery, there were a lot of eucalypts growing around the building, and consequently there were a lot of gum leaves in the rain water. These made the water a little acid with their tannin. It turns out that tannic water is just about the very best additive that you can put into clay to improve its plasticity. Our gum leaf infused tannic rain water was a pale, transparent grey/brown colour. Some fancy companies that manufacture commercial Porcelain bodies, buy in, at great expense, a product called ’Totannin’, that does much the same thing. Our clay really responds to any time left wrapped in plastic bags, sometimes double bagged, for long term storage. Then stored in a cool dark place and not touched for as long as you can bear it.
Each Friday evening, before the workshops, I bake a loaf of bread and a tart. This time, its beetroot and French goats cheese over a bed of slow cooked onion jam. This has always proved to be a very popular lunch contribution at the workshops. Every one brings something to share for lunch. There is always just a bit more than we need. Everyone eats well and the selection is broad, varied and delicious.
We spent the first day on the wheel, throwing all the forms that we will work with on the following day. I demonstrate each step in the process on each day.
Teaching a throwing school in winter is always just a little bit of a challenge. The pots don’t want to dry out over night to stiffen up to the point where they can be turned, trimmed, manipulated and handled with ease.. I get the pots to dry faster, by stoking up the slow combustion stove to the max, and keep it going well into the night, to ensure that the pots evaporate off enough of their moisture to be workable. It’s a juggling act, but I manage to muddle through, and at the end of the weekend, everybody gets to take home their finished works.
In the orchard, the early peaches and nectarines are flowering. There is only 3 more weeks to spring, and lots of plants are starting to come back to life, buds are swelling and even the lawn is starting to grown again. This last part isn’t so thrilling though, as this means a few hours of lawn mowing several times a week.
Spring blossom always offers up so much positive energy, the a promise of warmer weather and a bountiful harvest to come.
Nothing is ever finished, Nothing is ever perfect and nothing lasts.
I fired my wood fired kiln a week or so ago. It was a very good firing. I’m quite pleased with the results. Of course there were a few 2nds, as there always are, however, on balance. I got a lot of very nice pieces out of the kiln. The clay bodies worked very well and I achieved a lovely red/orange flashing colour on the clay.
So that was very nice to see , and I look forward to developing those clay bodies into the future, as they are exactly what I like about wood fired pots, unglazed outside and fire-flashed. All the domestic pots in this firing were raw glazed. ie. glazed when they were still wet or damp from the potters wheel, and then dried out and fired without a bisque firing. A raw glazed firing starts off very slow and gentle, just like a bisque firing, because it is. Then it ends like a stoneware glaze firing. It saves a lot of energy and work in packing, and unpacking, the kiln twice.
However, only certain glazes can be adapted to work as raw glazes. The recipe needs to contain about 20% of clay or thereabouts. This is required to allow the glaze to shrink onto the pot as it itself shrinks as it dries out. Otherwise the glaze will flake off. There is a particular quality of high clay glazes. They contain a lot of alumina. This means that some glaze chemistries, that require high silica content cannot be made very easily. The are a few work-arounds like adding bentonite instead of kaolin, but there are limits to far you can take this successfully. I’m working on it.
Some of the most interesting pots in the firing were my Australian versions of Korean influenced ‘Moon Jars’. The moon jar is a significant cultural object in Korea. They have been made for centuries for the Royal Family, and more recently are quite sought after in contemporary Korean middle class homes.
Interestingly, the porcelain clay for these ancient cultural masterpieces was mined in a very small village in the central north of what is now South Korea. This is the very same village where I have been going to study and carry out some of my research for the past decade in Korea. I’m honored to have a few of my porcelain pieces on show in the Porcelain Museum on site there. It’s such an inspiring place and the single stone, weathered sericite, porcelain clay is amazing.
Having worked there on a number of occasions now. I can’t help but be inspired by these magnificent objects. I can’t bring myself to make copies of them, it wouldn’t fitting for me, sitting here in Australia, as an Australian, appropriating their finest cultural heritage. And what’s more, probably doing it badly.
But I can’t resist the temptation to have a go at a big round jar influenced by the Korean moon jars. so I made my own Australian version. This series of homages are not made from porcelain, nor are they spherical and white – glowing like the full moon. I have made mine as a different kind of ‘moon’ jar. I threw them in white stoneware, coated them in black slip, and then again in white slip, so that I could do some sgraffito carving through the surface. A technique that I have become fond of in recent years.
During the long, high temperature, wood kiln firing, the combination of ash and the slip coatings combined to turn the surface a lovely green/grey/black/white/brown/orange, depending on where they were placed in the two different chambers for each of the firings. They bear no resemblance to the big, fat, round, glowing, white Korean porcelain full moon jars. These are definitely my own interpretation. They couldn’t possibly be confused as culturally appropriated local copies!
Full Moon jar
Moon shine vine. Decoration by Janine King.
Phases of the moon Jar
Phases of the Moon Jar II
Clouds over the moon
Phases of the moon III
Moon Flower jar
Man on the moon jar.
A very different ‘riff’ on the subject of the Moon Jar
We have just completed another weekend workshop. This time on the topic of throwing. Moving on from rock glazes to wheel work.
I advertised one weekend and filled the next weekend as well. We also have a waiting list for a third weekend, which, if we fill it will need to be at the end of this month on the 23rd/24th, as all other weekends are fully booked.
These images taken by Janine king
We have 12 potters wheels in the pottery now. 3 kick wheels, that no-one except Janine and I know how to use. They are quite simply the best way to make beautiful sensitive pots, in a slow gentle mindful way. But no one seems interested to learn about them. However, we have had 2 students over the past series of workshops that have had a go on them. AND, I believe enjoyed it! They made some beautiful pots on them.
We also have 9 Japanese shimpo electric wheels. Electric wheels are what everybody is used to using. When I did my apprenticeship with a Japanese potter. I had to learn to use the Japanese ‘shimpo’ style wheel. I’d never seen one before. I had to get used to sitting cross-legged on the workshop floor, with the wheel sunken below floor level. It was a difficult thing to learn as a 20 year old who wasn’t used to sitting and working cross-legged. However, I did develop an appreciation of the compact nature of the shimpo wheel design and the quality of the engineering.
We have one from every series of the shimpo wheels that they have produced, from the 1960’s through to the 2020’s. (RK 1, 2, and 3). One of the older shimpos is a bit worse for wear and difficult to use, so that is my demonstration wheel. That leaves 8 good ones for student use. So we can enrol 8 students in each throwing workshop.
This series of workshops is based on the topic of kitchen wares, baking dishes, mixing bowls and mortars and pestles, etc.
I demonstrated making both round and rectangular baking dishes, by cutting out sections and hand-building the pot back together again in the new ‘squared-off’ shape. The simplest method is to cut a single ‘leaf’ shaped hole in the centre of the dish. I call this the ‘melanoma’ cut. As it’s the cut of choice for skin cancer surgeons when removing melanomas. This is simple, neat and easy, but it creates the greatest stress in the bottom of the dish. This method has given me the most grief with cracking during drying. But it does give you a very elegant, long narrow dish, excellent for baking a whole fish!
A more successful method, from my experience, is to make two cuts, one on either side of the pot and push the sides in to fill the void. The ‘amphora’, or balanced cut. This creates a lot less stress in the body of the dish, and is therefore less prone to cracking and is more successful. The most successful and least stressful, is simply to squeeze to pot together between two blocks of wood, and then smooth out and flatten to rumpled base inside. All good techniques, worth practising.
Although we start with regular round pots. They must be re-shaped into ovals while still damp and soft enough to rework. Oval and rectangular baking dishes can’t be turned in any normal way on the wheel once they are shaped, so I’ve learnt to trim the foot by hand using a ’sur-form’ blade, readily available from hardware shops. It’s careful use, followed by a light soft spongeing creates a nice, smooth, serviceable finished edge with undercut.
At the end of the day/weekend, all the shelves are groaning under the weight of over 120 kgs of freshly thrown and turned kitchen wares. There are only 3 bags of clay left on the pallet at the end of the second day. Everybody really got stuck in and made the most of the creative, learning and experimental environment. I encourage everyone to push their skill levels and not to feel too precious about any pot. Stay detached emotionally from your work. Feel free to just squash it up if it isn’t going well and make another one. A better one! It’s a much better way to learn. We all have to learn to practice detachment. It’s a learnable skill. Have many goes at the technique, until you get it right. Don’t feel precious, just squash it up and start again, practice makes perfect. And of course, it is of no cost o the student, as I’ll be the one to stiffen up all the slops and failed attempts. Stiffening the slurry of rejects and turnings on plaster batts during the week, re-pugging and re-bagging ready for another life.
I also demonstrated making mixing bowls and mortars and pestles. I like to ‘pull’ a spout into the wall of these pots. It’s very practical, but really enlivens the form and gives them great character.
Everybody is encouraged to bring something to share for lunch each day. We have quite a sumptuous feast, sitting at the big table in the re-arranged gallery room. Good wholesome food, good conversation and great atmosphere. Lunch is concluded, when our resident barista ‘Len’ makes everyone a coffee. Then it’s back to work.
I ask every one to help clean up their mess at the end of each day, and they do a pretty good job, but there is always more clayey smears all over the floor afterwards. The more you look, the more you find. So when it is all over, I give the floor a final spongy mopping over again, cleaning the water bucket regularly to get as much of the clay dust up off the floor as possible. It’s worth the extra effort, as otherwise, clay dust gets everywhere, and is very fine, so we have to take care with all of our OH&S efforts to keep a clean environment for the benefit of the next group of students – and ourselves.
The weather forecast for this last weekend was pretty poor. 35 mm of rain on Sat and 15mm. on Sunday. We got it all and more! With 63 mm in total over the 2 days. One person even got bogged when leaving on Sunday afternoon. I had to dig out the mud from behind the wheels from the hollows that they had sunk in, and shovel in coarse gravel, so as to get sufficient traction to reverse out of the boggy saturated soil, next to the driveway. An intense way to end a great weekend of learning and sharing. Thank you to everyone who came and made it special.
I appreciate being in the presence your positive creative energy.
Nothing is perfect, nothing is ever finished and nothing lasts. Enjoy the moment.
Tonight my Fingers Smell of Garlic 
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