Designing and building an outdoor sustainable kitchen & entertainment space
November, 2007 Ray Cirino & David kahn
One of the advantages of living in Sunny Sountern Califonia is enjoying the outdoors. Yet very few are eating or cooking outside daily.
This hands-on workshop will use permaculture design and natural building skills to complete a beautiful space that is functional, economical and sustainable. Learn earth building techniques. you can apply this experience to building anythig from a guesthouse to a chicken coop! Designing and building an outdoor kitchen includes: Site Design, Earthen oven, Solar cooker and Heated booth
Come to one or all 5 sessions to learn the skills required to complete an outdoor kitchen and dinning space. Class Description:
1. Design phase; placing the the kitchen on the site and designing a coustom sustainable outdoor kitchen that works. 2. The Art & science of building with earth, applying new technologies to an age old skill. 3. Designing and building a Solar cooker as one of the main elements in an outdoor kitchen. 4. Adding a warm Bench that is heated by the oven and stays warm for hours (warmer than inside your house!). 5. Natural Plastering
When: November, 2007 Where: Edendale Farm in Silver Lake Fee: $ 75/ day including lunch! Children are Welcome
Article:
*SOME NATIONAL STUPIDITIES*
by: Mark Twain
*(1891-1892)*
"THE slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable. This form of stupidity is confined to no community, to no nation; it is universal. The fact is the human race is not only slow about borrowing valuable ideas--it sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.
Take the German stove, for instance--the huge white porcelain monument that towers toward the ceiling in the corner of the room, solemn, unsympathetic, and suggestive of death and the grave-- where can you find it outside of the German countries? I am sure I have never seen it where German was not the language of the region. Yet it is by long odds the best stove and the most convenient and economical that has yet been invented.
Take the German stove, for instance--the huge white porcelain monument
that towers toward the ceiling in the corner of the room, solemn,
unsympathetic, and suggestive of death and the grave-- where can you
find it outside of the German countries? I am sure I have never seen it
where German was not the language of the region. Yet it is by long odds
the best stove and the most convenient and economical that has yet been
invented.
To the uninstructed stranger it promises nothing; but he will soon find
that it is a masterly performer, for all that. It has a little bit of a
door which you couldn't get your head into--a door. which seems
foolishly out of proportion to the rest of the edifice; yet the door is
right, for it is not necessary that bulky fuel shall enter it.
Small-sized fuel is used, and marvelously little at that. The door
opens into a tiny cavern which would not hold more fuel that a baby
could fetch in its arms. The process of firing is quick and simple.
At half past seven on a cold morning the servant brings a small
basketful of slender pine sticks - say a modified armful - and puts
half these in, lights them with a match, and closes the door. They
burn out in ten or twelve minutes. He then puts in the rest and locks
the door, and carries off the key. The work is done. He will not come
again until the next morning.
All day long and until past midnight all parts of the room will be
delightfully warm and comfortable, and there will be no headaches and
no sense of closeness or oppression. In an American room, whether
heated by steam, hot water, or open fires, the neighborhood of the
register or the fireplace is warmest - the heat is not equally diffused
throughout the room; but in a German room one is as comfortable in one
part of it as in another. Nothing is gained or lost by being near the
stove. Its surface is not hot; you can put your hand on it anywhere
and not get burnt.
Consider these things. One firing is enough for the day; the cost
is next to nothing; the heat produced is the same all day, instead of
too hot and too cold by turns; one may absorb himself in his business
and peace; he does not need to feel any anxieties or solicitudes about
his fire; his whole day is a realized dream of bodily comfort.
America could adopt this stove, but does America do it? The
American wood stove, of whatsoever breed, it is a terror. There can be
no tranquility of mind where it is. It requires more attention than a
baby. It has to be fed every little while, it has to be watched all
the time; and for all reward you are roasted half your time and frozen
the other half. It warms no part of the room but its own part; it
breeds headaches and suffocation, and makes one's skin feel dry and
feverish; and when your wood bill comes in you thin you have been
supporting a volcano.
We have in America many and many a breed of coal stove also -
fiendish things, everyone of them. The base burner sort are heady and
require but little attention; but none of them distributes its heat
uniformly through the room, or keeps it at an unwavering temperature,
or fails to take the life out of the atmosphere and leave it stuffy and
smothery and stupefying..."
From "Europe and Elsewhere"
