Kerry’s Garden

The oven is proceeding though much slower than I had hoped. This brick laying thing is work! The chemical burns have healed and the rubber gloves are working nicely. Last weekend T. helped me wash brick. They did need a cleaning as some of the used freebie brick I picked up had been a patio [...]

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First thing this morning I was at Home Depot purchasing 4 bags of mortar. I know I will need more but the plan was not to keep any around to get wet and ruin. That was the plan, use the four bags this weekend. Yeah… Fast forward a couple of hours. The first bag of [...]

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Last night saw the creation of the cement pad for the mud oven. I got quite a workout mixing 800 lbs of cement in the wheel barrow. After taking this photo I covered it with plastic to slow down the drying a bit. I will give it a week or so before I start laying [...]

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Yesterday I found a local place that sold gravel that was also open on Sunday. No small miracle around here. Another truckload of gravel and the foundation hole is filled with some to spare for some inner fill later on. After cleaning up the area, tools, and truck, I checked the clay/sand mix at about [...]

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Given all of the drought we have had around here in the past few years I refuse to begrudge all of the rain we have been having. That being said, it has put the oven progress back. I had planned to make another load of bricks on Thursday but the clay and sand had both [...]

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The first batch of mini adobe bricks are drying in the sun. I ended up making a form to make four 3″x4″x1.5″ blocks at a time. I wanted to start slow so I decided to make a small batch today. I sifted out the large pieces of clay with a 1/2″ mesh screen and mixed [...]

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While looking for materials for my newest project I have become a big fan of Craigslist. Yesterday I hit the mother load. While doing a search for fire brick I located an elderly gentleman about an hour away with a truck load of old fire brick. He wanted $65 for the lot. While I only [...]

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