mikro2nd

Well worth doing!

Start with the easy stuff – Tomatoes, Lettuce, Salad Greens, Chillis, Swiss Chard – but the real challenge is in getting self-sufficient in grains, legumes, onions, potatoes – the bulk stuff that really keeps us alive. And then on to the really hard stuff like Sunflowers for oil.

We have been self-sufficient for Beans for the past couple of years, but grains are a still-outstanding challenge. Self-sufficient in Onions the year before last, but last season our supplies were seriously depleted by a Baboon that ate most of the Onions while they were drying out on racks. :-O

The goal is to eat a Totally Self-Produces Pizza dinner – including the beer.

Http://mikro2nd.net/blog/planb/ is where I write about this stuff. Also should have a website up in a couple of weeks about our self-sufficiency project/permaculture/farm at http://mikro2nd.net/.

Built one before – was very much viewed as an experiment/learning opportunity since it was our first attempt at building anything with cob.

We failed to prepare the foundation well enough, and also placed th oven too close to wet ground. After using the oven very successfully a number of times, we had some very heavy rains which cause the base to shift – clay swells when wet – which cracked the lime-plaster. Water got into the underlying cob and the oven began its journey back into the Earth it came from…

Its been a couple of years now, but we haven’t got around to building a new oven. I miss it, though.

wet and mostly cold. Clammy. Uncomfortable. Might be better in the tropics, but vastly overrated in the average temperate climate.

Making out in a forest, though… ;-)