Beside building a fence between us and our nightmare neighbours, my wife and I are wanting to build a workshop for my wood working. I'm planning on a 20x20 foot building on the south west part of our property. In addition to wood working I am planning on building a brick wood oven in there for baking pizza.
I love pizza.
This will allow me to burn my scrap wood and collect and save the ash. Hard wood ash is useful for creating lye (a main ingredient for home made soap); the ash will also help add potassium to the gardens or be tossed in the compost.
So the pizza oven will allow me to cook pizza (in 90 seconds) and breads without depending on anyone but my own supply of wood. If the electrical grid goes down for a couple days I still can cook pizza and bread. But to be honest it is more about getting back to the roots of society. Ancient peoples used 'pizza' ovens to bake bread and having tasted it I must say it is far superior to oven baked.
But in case of
Another part of 'the kitchen' is the root cellar. I don't know if it's going to be possible to build this year but it would be good to have as our gardens expand and as a good place to age cheese. If we have a 10x5 bed of potatoes we will have a lot of surplus for the winter; where will we keep them!?
Because of our high water table it won't be possible to build the cellar under the ground. I will have to build it out of concrete and pile several feet of dirt around/above it. This will also make for a good slide hill for my boy during winter. ;)
I got the books I ordered from Amazon and early I might add.
2 books were for my son, who is due May 16th; the other is a book on gardening for BEER.
It's called the Homebrewer's Garden and I already read it cover to cover. I'm really looking forward to adding beer supplies to my garden this year. I've found another Manitoban who grows hops and is going to sell me some roots for $5 each. I'm buying 6 of them (Hallertau, Cascade, Nugget, Stirling, Fuggle and Mt. Hood varieties) which will give me a good variety of hops to use in my beers for many years to come. I will also be able to sell my own hop roots in a year or two.
Now, on average, if I were to buy hops from the store I would spend about $5 on each batch. So this puts me 6 batches of beer in the hole. BUT in 2-3 years when the plants have established their own root systems I hope to get around 24-30 batches of hops. If I am able to sell some roots (called Rhyzomes) then I will have paid off the costs associated with growing my own.
The unseen but tasted advantage is that my home grown hops will be much fresher than the store bought ones and will allow me to brew tastier beers. :D
Alas, that will not be till later on in the year. Or next.
NOT IT!!!!
Here's a great site for the pizza oven.
ReplyDeleteCheck out the little video.
You'll want one too.
www.traditionaloven.com