Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Of donkeys and ovens
One step forward, one step back.
I had about 14 fruit trees in my garden. The garden is surrounded by a wooden fence, built by a local craftsman from trees he cut down with his machete. For 11 months, it successfully protected my garden from the donkeys, cows, pigs, and goats that wander around the school ground. But it was starting to fall apart, and my attempts at repairing it by tying flimsy planks across the fence with twine were not very successful. Two weeks ago, on Sunday morning, a donkey entered my garden. It ate the tops off my papaya trees, chopped my formerly-thriving passion fruit vines down to a few leaves, and pulled my stafeli tree out of the ground.
Eight months of watering, and the passion vines are back to where they started. The papaya and stafeli trees may or may not make it. Yeah, I've been a little demoralized garden-wise. But there are still many trees the donkey didn't touch, and the fence has been rebuilt, complete with thorns. Hopefully, when I return to my site from travelling, enough time will have passed that I'll be motivated to work on my garden again.
(I've been watering my trees every day for months now, and watching them slowly grow taller provides some stability to my life and helps me keep my sanity. Seeing them eaten by donkeys was not good for my mental equilibrium).
But in good news, I built a brick oven! I took this idea from another volunteer, whose been baking bread for himself for months now. It turns out to be much easier than I thought to build an oven. Basically, you need a pile of bricks and some metal window mesh. You make a U-shape (three sides of a rectangle, with the fourth side left open) two bricks high. Then you lay a piece of window mesh across the bricks, for hot charcoal to sit on. Then you add two more layers of bricks, followed by another piece of window mesh (this one is for the thing you're cooking to sit on). Then two more layers of bricks, or three if you expect to cook something big.
The next steps are to close the top and front of the oven. To close the top, you can use a piece of metal roofing with dirt or bricks piled on top as insulation. I don't have metal roofing, so I used a piece of window mesh, plus a plank to strengthen the mesh. I then piled bricks on top of the oven. I left a small opening for a chimney, which is made of a can with the bottom cut out.
To close the front of the oven, I used bricks. You need to leave a space on the bottom for air to blow in, so I placed two bricks to either side of the front of the oven, then placed one brick across them to make a sort of arch. I then piled bricks in front of the rest of the oven.
To use the oven, I simply place lit charcoal in the lower piece of window mesh, place the pan of whatever I'm cooking on the higher piece of window mesh, and close the oven with a large pile of bricks in the front. And wait. Bread takes about an hour to an hour and a half to cook, and quick bread takes only 30 minutes.
So: donkeys are bad, but fresh bread is awesome. That's my conclusion for the week.
(You can see pictures of the oven at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgtanzania)
I had about 14 fruit trees in my garden. The garden is surrounded by a wooden fence, built by a local craftsman from trees he cut down with his machete. For 11 months, it successfully protected my garden from the donkeys, cows, pigs, and goats that wander around the school ground. But it was starting to fall apart, and my attempts at repairing it by tying flimsy planks across the fence with twine were not very successful. Two weeks ago, on Sunday morning, a donkey entered my garden. It ate the tops off my papaya trees, chopped my formerly-thriving passion fruit vines down to a few leaves, and pulled my stafeli tree out of the ground.
Eight months of watering, and the passion vines are back to where they started. The papaya and stafeli trees may or may not make it. Yeah, I've been a little demoralized garden-wise. But there are still many trees the donkey didn't touch, and the fence has been rebuilt, complete with thorns. Hopefully, when I return to my site from travelling, enough time will have passed that I'll be motivated to work on my garden again.
(I've been watering my trees every day for months now, and watching them slowly grow taller provides some stability to my life and helps me keep my sanity. Seeing them eaten by donkeys was not good for my mental equilibrium).
But in good news, I built a brick oven! I took this idea from another volunteer, whose been baking bread for himself for months now. It turns out to be much easier than I thought to build an oven. Basically, you need a pile of bricks and some metal window mesh. You make a U-shape (three sides of a rectangle, with the fourth side left open) two bricks high. Then you lay a piece of window mesh across the bricks, for hot charcoal to sit on. Then you add two more layers of bricks, followed by another piece of window mesh (this one is for the thing you're cooking to sit on). Then two more layers of bricks, or three if you expect to cook something big.
The next steps are to close the top and front of the oven. To close the top, you can use a piece of metal roofing with dirt or bricks piled on top as insulation. I don't have metal roofing, so I used a piece of window mesh, plus a plank to strengthen the mesh. I then piled bricks on top of the oven. I left a small opening for a chimney, which is made of a can with the bottom cut out.
To close the front of the oven, I used bricks. You need to leave a space on the bottom for air to blow in, so I placed two bricks to either side of the front of the oven, then placed one brick across them to make a sort of arch. I then piled bricks in front of the rest of the oven.
To use the oven, I simply place lit charcoal in the lower piece of window mesh, place the pan of whatever I'm cooking on the higher piece of window mesh, and close the oven with a large pile of bricks in the front. And wait. Bread takes about an hour to an hour and a half to cook, and quick bread takes only 30 minutes.
So: donkeys are bad, but fresh bread is awesome. That's my conclusion for the week.
(You can see pictures of the oven at http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgtanzania)
# posted by Kristen @ 11:48 PM 
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