We currently have several projects at various stages of completion.  When working with mud, some courses have to dry in stages before the builder can move on to the next course.  This allows time for work on other structures or other details of the buildings.  The shop is nearly finished.  The hog shed has two sections complete and we have two sections yet to begin.  We intend to build a mud brick wall around the perimeter of the hog yard as part of the long wall around the property.  Through previous experience with a large pig we owned many years ago, we are aware that pigs are very strong and clever escape artists.  There is no substitute for a solid wall to keep pigs where they belong.  These projects had to be put on hold during the heat wave and drought that has baked more than half the nation since May.  Mud cannot be easily obtained when the ground is as hard as concrete and water evaporates almost as soon as it hits the earth.  During these months of intense heat, we have felt like caged animals, desperate to get something done but beaten down by the intensity of the elements.

Now that we are experiencing more comfortable temperatures and since we’ve been getting some rain, we have started back to work with a will.  We have been rehabbing the garden beds and planting everyday. 

Our most recent project serves a dual purpose.  We have begun a new outdoor kitchen to provide us with comfortable living space outside during good weather and to give us some experience working with mud brick construction.  It is important when working with any new construction method to create small, easily completed projects that serve a purpose in order to become familiar with all the characteristics of the building materials.

The Shop

Construction on the shop began in 2008 when Aurielle announced that she wanted Daddy to build her a "Restaurant right here..."  PRESTO!!!  The Shop is an authentic, half-timbered building with ten inch thick walls.  We weathered 17 hours of Ike's eyewall winds in it when the monster storm stalled right over Waller.  Ike gave my family an intense appreciation of my husband's willingness to work with heavy materials.  Heavy construction, building things to last, takes time, but the results are worth the toil.  The Shop is still under construction but we hope to have it completed in time for Christmas.
Finishing out the shop will involve finishing the floor, either with decorative tiles or flagstone.  Before any decorative surface can be laid, the actual floor has to be installed.  Originally, we had considered a concrete slab as our best option, but once we became familiar with mud brick construction, we decided that nothing would be more perfect.  Dana built a form for 12 x 12 x 4 inch blocks and began making bricks to put in the shop floor.  The bricks will be dried but not kilned.  Once they are laid, we will wet them down and float them in.  The floor will then dry as one, solid unit, ready to be covered with flagstone or tile.



For the actual surface of the floor, I am tempted to try a tile mosaic, because it would lend character and because a portion of the tile work could be done with less expensive, broken tiles of different colors, cut to fit, in repeating patterns without too much trouble.  The Romans included mosaics in their floors as part of the artwork in their homes.  There are many fine examples of Roman mosaics still in existence to inspire artistic ideas and images of them are just a click away on the web.  The ceiling remains to be installed and it will be painted, but it will not likely be left stark white.  I have seen beautiful cloud patterns with striking blues, white and silver clouds, and golden rays, on Italian chapel ceilings.  With the availability of good paint in every imaginable color today, it is unfathomable to me why more ceilings are not painted with attractive motifs.  We will likely use sheetrock for the ceiling.  There is a lot to be said for sheetrock and we believe that it will be the best material for our purposes.

The shop has 8 doors, each with a long open space for windows. 



The homemade stained glass panels to fill the spaces are now complete and will be installed shortly. 


The shop doors are homemade and were built by my husband out of corral boards after a neighbor removed a fence that was not very old in favor of vinyl fencing.  We hope to finish the doors with pretty brass hardware.
The four stained glass windows on the front of the shop were installed several months ago and have gotten a lot of attention.



They were my first effort at stained glass windows and I was not concerned with trying to make them look perfect, because I understood that being a rank amateur, achieving perfection would be impossible.  Trying to do a really professional looking job would only serve as a source of frustration.  I wanted to enjoy the project.  Instead of saving up the funds to buy a glass grinder, I used a cinderblock to rub the edges smooth, pouring water on the cinderblock frequently to reduce the heat of friction that might chip the glass unevenly.  After the glass was cut, I soldered it together, once again trying not to be too concerned with perfection.  The resulting windows certainly are not perfect, but many people have said they are beautiful and some people have wanted to take pictures of them.  My intent was to produce windows that would fit the character of the building, serve their purpose of letting in light, and provide some color at the same time, without spending hundreds of dollars to have an artist create something that might not satisfy my taste.

Of the 14 windows in the shop, only two small, fixed panes remain to be made but they are not large and should not take more than a few days to cut and solder once the fall garden is planted. 

The building is waiting for it’s final coat of paint in a color my daughter selected that is very close to peach.  The inside will be a lemony cream color, but the final coat of plaster must be applied to the interior before the walls can be sealed and painted.  Each interior wall will sport a narrow border of geometric designs painted in red, blue, green, and white, similar to those the Greeks and Romans were partial to.  I have seen those and my daughter loves them.  We decided the building simply would not be complete without them and it will give my daughter some experience in graphic design.  She is quite the little artist and will enjoy helping us with the  painting.

Before any of that can be accomplished, the chimney must be finished and bricked in. 


We built a good fireplace with a chimney that draws well.  We want to finish it with mud bricks to get the right shape and then it will be plastered and painted.  The frame for the fireplace was a large aquarium stand that a neighbor had thrown onto his trash pile years ago, but the neighbor changed his mind about throwing it away and offered it to my mother instead.  Never having had an aquarium so large, Grandma had no use for it and she offered it up for the fireplace.  We used old corrugated tin to fill in the frame and to support the mud while it dried.  We purchased metal chimney pipe (a very inexpensive product) but this will be hidden from view when the fireplace is finished.

Inside the fire chamber, 12x12x4 inch adobe blocks were used to make the walls, giving the fireplace all of the wonderful thermal characteristics that adobe is famous for.  The facing is done with regular sized bricks.  The red clay used to make all of the bricks was dug out of a ditch by the shop, the sand was some from the back of the property added to Builder's Select sand mixed with old hay.  The bricks will continue upward all the way to the ceiling.
For the damper, Dana drilled holes in the aquarium stand frame before he began construction of the fireplace.  He then drilled holes into a piece of sheet metal to match.  He beat a fold into it about 4 inches on the long side.  The heating element from an old dead stove was formed into a lifting rod to adjust the position of the damper.  He installed the damper with lag bolts that were not bolted all the way down.  Bevelled bricks leave an opening for the rod so that it can hide away on one side of the fireplace.  To learn the dimensions and mechanics of a fireplace, Dana referred to an old "do it yourself" book.
There are numerous finishing touches that we still have not addressed, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

The Hog Shed

The hog shed is about one third complete.  When it is finished, it will have stalls where the pigs can escape the blistering sun and the cold rain.  It has concrete floors that extend outward a little way to give the pigs a dry place to lay down outside the stalls. 



In this photo, the Hog Shed is unoccupied.  The leaves and wetness are from storms that rolled through for days on end.  The concrete slabs will be covered with sand or stall clay and shavings will be put into the stalls.  Trying to house pigs on black clay soil, even in a well roofed barn would be a disaster of mud and extremely unhealthy for them.  A concrete floor under clay and bedding will provide a dry area that is easy to clean and the young piglets don’t get crushed into the mud. 
Crushing of piglets is something many mother pigs do.  It is one evolutionary strategy that reduces the energy she must expend raising her young and it gives the remaining piglets a better shot at survival because they get more of mother’s milk than they would if all of the young survived.  Because pigs have so many offspring and because they are a large, meaty animal, pigs are a very cost effective food animal to keep, but they are labor intensive.  It is necessary to be with them when they farrow, to protect the piglets from being crushed for up to four days.  After four days, the mother pig will usually stop trying to crush any of them and the piglets are quicker to get out of her way when she walks or lays down.  The facilities must be built to meet the particular requirements of pigs or they will not stay healthy.  Pigs do best with good shelter from storms, plenty of shade, a large paddock, fresh, clean water, and food whenever they want it, in fixed feeders that are recessed in a wall.  This design makes it more difficult for pigs to contaminate their feed. 
The gravel to mix concrete was the most expensive part of building the hog shed, at more than $50 a yard.  There is no substitute for a good slab in the hog stalls, so this expense was unavoidable.

To begin the hog shed, we used old corral boards as form boards for the slab.  We used old T-posts and wire mesh laid into the forms instead of rebar, and we poured the concrete slab in sections with the part of the slab that extends out from the building slanting away from the structure to direct water away from the interior of the stalls.  Cinderblocks were mortared in on the edges of the slab to form the base of the walls, and bolts were set into wet concrete in the cinderblocks to prevent movement of the walls at the bottom. 

The structure is framed with 2x6 boards brought to us by a contractor working to rebuild Galveston after Ike.  After framing the structure, we used pallets set into the frame to hold the mud daub.  Other pallet and corral boards were used to fill the spaces in the pallets to hold the mud.  The walls were packed as tightly as possible.  These walls stood, unroofed through the wettest April ever recorded for our region and they did not wash out.  The hog shed has stood waiting for us to get back to it since early April and it is no worse for wear.

Once the existing structure is roofed, posts for individual runs can be set and hog panels will be used to fence the small housing complex.  At that point, the pigs will be moved from their temporary home (the old barn) to their new quarters.  We will then complete the remainder of the building. 

We decided that calf panels on strong rafters would be the best support for a clay tile roof.  The rafters are 4x4 posts that were once part of the white lattice vegetable stand at the front of the property.  Dana cut wedges in each post to keep them from slipping and nailed them in on top of the shed.

The Outdoor Kitchen

We are particularly proud of our idea for an outdoor kitchen.  We have an old stove that stopped working 2 years ago.  It has been sitting outside my back door with a dead dishwasher, looking trashy. 


One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  The stove will become a warming oven and grill.  Attached to it on one side, we will build a large smoker of mud bricks.  The smoker will have a flat top to serve as a work surface while preparing food.  The door will be set into the front of the smoker, instead of the top, and another section of counter will come off of the smoker forming an L.  A cabinet will be made of mud bricks between the smoker and an outside icebox.  The dead dishwasher is nothing more than a thick plastic case with a good door on it.  The pump and motor we disassembled previously.  Mud and mud bricks will serve to insulate it.  A drain in the bottom will let out the melting ice water.  Once completed, the whole structure will be decorated with interesting shapes (I picture shells) affixed bordering the sides with crushed, colored glass embedded in plaster or adobe casts.  Candlelight is always a nice addition to any outside room.  I purchased 3 old metal candle stands from a resale shop.  They had seen better days, but the shape is nice.  We used gold colored spray paint with zinc in it to paint them and they now look like brand new golden candle stands.  We intend to set them in the plaster of the smoker the 3 outside corners of the L.  I will cut the tops and bottoms off of colored glass bottles for shades and the candles will cast colored light over the outside kitchen in the evening.

To begin the outdoor kitchen, we used sand and fill dirt from the sand trap at the back corner of the farm to raise the ground level.  After putting down the pad, wetting it and stomping it, we set 4 concrete blocks on it in the spot where we want the grill.  We put the old stove on the blocks with the bottom drawer removed.  We filled in the area underneath the stove, on the ground, with mud, raising it up level with the 4 blocks. 


The color of this mud is similar to concrete, but it has no Portland in it.  Aluminum silicate in some old leg poltice (it has lost all of the linement it once contained) was mixed into the mud as an experiment.  We did not like the results because it has taken much longer to dry than it should.  Mud and straw will usually dry on the outside within a day and be very firm to the touch.  The experimental mud is drying though, so we will leave it in place.  In future, we will not experiment with our mud.  We will just make it like other people have made it for several millenia.

After making a mold, my husband, Dana, got right to work and made his first mud bricks.  The cats inspected them very thoroughly while we were having dinner and I decided that a photo, as evidence of the crime, should be included on the website. 

The problem with cat paw prints in clay construction materials goes back a ways.  When researching mud brick construction I read of a Roman roof tile made of terra cotta found in Britain that dated to the time of the Roman occupation.  A kitten's paw print was plainly evident in the tile.
Fortunately, the mud bricks are easy to repair by just wetting them and adding a little mud if needed.



Today we filled some of the hollows under the stove with mud daub, leaving enough space for the fire. 



The top of the stove was removed to expose the open space between the outside walls of the stove and the oven walls.  The stove top and burners will not be a part of the grill at all.
Within the walls of the stove, the door hinge apparatus must be surrounded with thin metal to keep that space free of mud.  We just happen to have some of the tin ripped from the barn roof by Ike.  We bent it to fit the space and then filled the walls of the stove with a special mixture of mud, straw, sand, and shards of broken ceramic dishes and clay pots.  Filling the walls of the stove and the top will insulate those two sides and absorb heat that will be released slowly, over a long period of time, hopefully allowing us to bake in the oven.  The mixture will be allowed to dry while we continue working in the garden.



We set the first bricks along the side and mortared them in with a mud and sand mixture.  We can already see that the mud bricks will allow for a very attractive outdoor kitchen when it is finished.



September 8, 2009

For more than 2 years, we have been interested in building a clay oven to bake bread and pizza.  The Romans built them.  Nearly every culture has built them.  In Italy, many bakeries still use wood burning clay ovens to bake their bread and pizza.  We checked out all the websites, researched the ovens of Pompeii and Hurculaneum, and we worried about dimensions, materials, cost, and shape.  We thought, if we built it wrong, it might not work.  It might not get hot or stay hot.  It might not bake bread.  Tearing out a newly built, non-functioning clay oven would not be fun.  Our hesitation proved fortunate.  We were saved from spending too much money on a project that should not be nearly so expensive or complicated.

When we began researching mud bricks, a site popped up with a description and diagram for making a Roman brick kiln.  It was mentioned that the Romans mixed clay pot shards and broken ceramics into the adobe walls of their brick kilns.  Since the outdoor kitchen is not nearly so important as having good baking ovens at the front, we plunged right in, filling the walls of the old dead stove with mud, broken ceramics, and clay pot shards.  Figuring this must have been a simple trick the Romans learned to achieve the kind of heating possible in a clay oven, we expected it would heat the old dead stove sufficiently to at least keep food warm.  We decided that if it were no good for anything but a warming oven, it would still be worth having.  After stuffing the hollows of the underside with mud daub and setting a few mud bricks to get the job well under way, and letting all of it dry for a few days, we tested the oven.

The old dead stove heated up like an industrial pizza oven and stayed hot for hours.  This experiment has shown us that we no longer need to wait to build baking ovens into the shop.  We can easily achieve the moderate temperatures required for bread and even reach the extreme temperatures to cook exceptionally good traditional pizzas.  Once encased in mud walls, the old dead stove will no longer look like an old dead stove with mud on top.  It will look like an outdoor oven with a large grill and we hope to make it look like a professional job.



Mud is the easiest material to work with.  Any shape can be produced for bricks or ornamental moldings.  Any odd shapes can be trimmed or smoothed over with more mud.  As we become more familiar with the characteristics of mud bricks, we realize that we can build anything with them.  We can create forms that are aesthetically pleasing with very little effort.

Since mud bricks can be made in any size and nearly any shape, the time involved in building larger structures can be reduced simply by making larger bricks.  Cutting mud bricks in order to do proper masonry work is as simple as slicing them with a machete while the bricks are still wet, then letting them dry for a few days before mortaring them in with a mud and sand mixture.

There is nothing like a little success to motivate Dana.  The bricks are appearing now a dozen at a time.



The mud brick walls of the outdoor oven are going up now, much faster than we anticipated. The bricks used to build the grill and smoker walls will not be kilned because the heat of use will cure the bricks over time. 



For other structures, we have decided to build a Roman style, domed brick kiln that will hold many bricks.  Kilned bricks are stronger than sun dried bricks and since the brick kiln is a no brainer, it makes sense to build one before we begin any other construction with mud bricks.

The back side of the oven presents a different set of challenges.  We decided not to build a traditional clay oven as ancient people would have.  In clay ovens, the fire is set in the baking chamber and allowed to burn for hours, then the coals are swept out before the oven can be used.  Our dead stove provides for two oven racks so we decided not to line the baking chamber with clay.  Instead, we wanted to build the oven more on the design of the Roman brick kiln, with the fire under the heating chamber.  This design seems to be adequate for our purposes.  On the strength of Dana's premature test of the oven, Dana went forward with bricking in the back side of the oven without further modifications.  He first wired two galvanized pipes we had laying around with some metal rods and chicken wire to make a frame to hold up the bricks.  After bricking that in, the space for putting logs in was much smaller, but still adequate and will hold more heat for longer periods of time.


After building the wire frame for the portal of the fire chamber, mortaring in bricks for the walls has gone very quickly. 



We have begun work on the base of the smoker so that it can dry while we put the finishing touches on the grill and oven door.  Robin made some excellent smaller bricks that were used to finish the front lip of the grill wall.



After keeping the oven covered with tarps during several days of rain, we discovered an old familiar enemy lurking in the depths of the ground, waiting to rise up and attack our mud oven, trying to weaken it.  Fireants invaded, carrying sand right to the top of the oven, hoping to make it their own, personal, penthouse ant hill.


Once the sand was cleared away and some some biological weapons of mass ant destruction applied, Dana continued with his construction of the oven walls.

The oven door was a challenge.  It was filled with an inch thick mud pack and it is heavy, but not too heavy for the hinges.  Once the decorative panels were screwed back on the door, it was cleaned, painted gold, and put back on the oven.



So far, the oven project has exceeded all expectations in functionality and appearance.  We only hope the outdoor icebox works as well to hold the cold as the oven does holding heat.


Once the grill was useable, we decided it was time to retire the little smoker that my Grandfather gave to me over a decade ago.  We decided to hold a Moving Of The Fire Ceremony to commemorate the event.  The little smoker will likely be enshrined in some mud construction, coming in very handy somewhere in the future.
Dana built the last cook fire in the little smoker for the ceremony.


He prepared the big grill to receive the fire with oak and pecan, some of it charred from previous fires trying to dry it out enough to burn reliably after the rain.



Dana moved the fire with a shovel while everyone else remembered the fun of cooking on the little smoker.  I was thinking about the meals we will cook on the new adobe grill.



It seemed apropriate to grill some burgers for the new grill's first performance.  It was a good choice.  Grilled yellow squash and steamed beets for sides rounded out the meal.  Dana only burned himself three times before he realized that the mud brick of the grill radiated a lot of heat, keeping the entire grilling surface at high temperatures, even where there were few coals.


Now that we are using the new grill, we really want to finish the big smoker.  We anticipate having plenty of farm raised meat to smoke in the future and we want to be ready.
To begin construction of the big smoker, Dana laid 12x12x4 inch blocks and mortared them in with mud for the floor.  This adobe floor will enhance the thermal properties of the entire smoker.

October 29, 2009

Through the rainy fall, we’ve learned more about mud brick, as we anticipated.  Because adobe stands up longer in dry climates, it is an obvious material for places like the Mediterranean and the Arizona desert.  In hot, arid regions, the thermal properties of adobe make it an ideal building material.  In wet climates, mud brick can be an ideal material, but only if the builder is willing to experiment, meet challenges, and solve problems.  Portland was the solution we chose to keep the wet out of the shop and we will likely use it to protect our new mud grill and oven, but Portland creates it’s own challenges.  It is an expensive solution, costly in cash, time, and physical energy.  Portland is roughly $9 a bag, but it is heavy, dries too quickly, and for plastering it must all go on one wall in one coat.  Stopping in the middle of plastering a wall means extreme care must be taken when starting again and still it is difficult to smooth it out.  

While working on the mud oven, we have been exploring other, more economical solutions.  Bitumen emulsion is used to stabilize mud brick in wet climates.  It is called “asphalt” but in the U.S. the word has a different connotation.  Using “asphalt” to stabilize mud brick does not mean using gravel and tar, it means using two components that otherwise would not be soluble to one another, but they are emulsified to create a mixture.  Oil and water can be emulsified.  Bitumen emulsion for asphalt is composed of certain elemental materials, including metals that effect binding and sealing characteristics to stabilize the dried brick.  Certain bitumen emulsions are used in watercourses to stabilize blocks in the retaining walls because it does not contaminate the water.  Since we hope to build all of our structures with roofs suitable for water capture, bitumen emulsion seems the best substance for stabilizing our mud bricks.

We have not tried this yet.  We intend to build the next structure with stabilized mud bricks to increase structural stability, prevent water damage, and hopefully allow for frameless construction of the load bearing walls.  Because we do not want to risk having an adobe structure falling in on our heads, we may even choose to build pillars of concrete blocks to support the roofs, filling in between the pillars with stabilized adobe bricks.

Each structure we build teaches us more about the materials.  We are learning how to meet the challenges of a climate that can stay dry for 6 months, with extreme heat then it can turn cold and wet for months on end.  While it rains, we have been working on the mud blocks for the floor of the shop and the fireplace.  On dry, sunny days, usually in the evenings, we focus on the mud grill, oven, and smoker.  The mud blocks for the floor of the big smoker have been laid and a few bricks set at the corners.  All the time, we are aware of our spatial constraints (there are trees close by that we don’t want to cut down) and the need for an icebox in the outdoor kitchen.

We decided that we needed a smoker much faster than the big smoker will be complete.  To solve the problem, my husband drilled a few holes in the bottom of the oven.  These holes can only help the oven by allowing the heat to build faster inside of it (as in a roman brick kiln).  To bake bread in a mud brick oven, the fire burns for hours to heat the bricks then it is put out before any bread goes into the oven.  While the fire is burning, the holes allow smoke to come through from the underside of the oven.  After drilling the holes, we smoked two of our own Pekin Ducks in it.

The ducks were done in just about an hour.  The ducks were so tender and full of flavor, it was well worth the effort of duck plucking.  My personal recipe for smoked duck (roast duck can be prepared with the same ingredients) will be available on the bountiful harvest page.  It’s a no brainer recipe, anyone can prepare it, and everyone should experience my Pineapple Smoked Duck at least once in their lives.

The mud oven/smoker proved its’ mettle, so to speak.  We have been holding off using it, hoping for dry weather to plaster it, giving it plenty of time to dry, then the storms come rolling in again.  We realize that we are impatient and probably should just cover it until the next month or two without rain, but we would not have built it if we did not need the use of it.  We really can’t wait that long.

The outdoor kitchen experiment will be repeated later, at the front of the property, outside the shop.  We hope to offer smoked and grilled meat produced on our own farm for sale direct to the public.

The Turkey Barn

We have found a source for the most beautiful breeds of heritage turkeys.  The poults will not arrive until May and at that time, we will need suitable living quarters for them.  

We have decided to build a good, off the grid turkey barn with clay pot heaters to keep all of the birds warm and reduce trampling.  When young turkeys have only one source of warmth such as a heat lamp or light bulb in a cage, they will crowd up to it, suffocating and crushing the ones unlucky enough to be closest to the light.  With the price of turkey poults these days, I don’t want to lose any of them and I am willing to keep the fires going round the clock if necessary to keep them warm.  By heating the whole room, they will not crowd up, they will get plenty of exercise, and they will be less likely to contract diseases.  If the fire dies before we get back around to tend it, the mud brick walls will keep the temperature constant for many hours, giving us time to notice the problem and rekindle the fire. 

I have raised turkey poults successfully in the past, but it has always required a great deal of vigilance to keep them from trampling one another.  With turkeys costing roughly $10 a bird, we don’t want to lose a single poult, but we don’t want to baby-sit a bunch of turkeys 24 hours a day.  The best answer is a moderate sized room, completely enclosed with mud brick, a good roof, and two heaters.  The heaters will be clay pots, on their sides, inserted into the wall on either side of the room.  The opening to kindle a fire will face the outside of the barn, eliminating the need for chimneys.  This allows for burning pine or other trash wood, conserving the good wood for cooking and for the fireplace in the shop.  Clay pots are the best choice for heaters since they will conduct and radiate heat into the room without needing any alterations.  Mud brick might prove too effective a barrier to the heat of the fire and we do not want fire inside the turkey barn.

This project will give us another opportunity to experiment with adobe or clay roofing.  We intend to use the bitumen emulsion for this construction.  We will finish the roof with Portland based plaster and enamel paint for further protection against the leaching of heavy metals into water captured from the surface.  The roof will be supported by wood or galvanized steel rafters.  Calf panels will be laid across the rafters and wire mesh fencing will be laid over the calf panels, creating a strong roof support that can be walked on without fear of crashing through.  The roofing tiles will be laid on the wire, calf panels, and rafters.  The tiles will be mortared in with adobe mortar, then finished with plaster and enamel paint.  The ceiling can be plastered with unstabilized adobe mortar or left with the wire exposed.  It depends on how much time we have to complete the project before the turkeys arrive and how much energy we have after making it functional.