AT LAST SOMETHING PRACTICAL!

At last something practical! This morning we learned the secret of adobe. Vicent, a volunteer from France working for the past year at the Museo de Medicina Maya, took a small group of us to a hole in the ground at the back of the property. The hole went down about four feet. The first two feet were earth, somewhat darker than the clay below. Three of our group took hoes to the earth and clay and it fell in a mixed pile at the bottom of the pit. Meanwhile Vicent had me and another volunteer chopping straw. The other volunteer, a young woman from France, was especially forceful and effective with the machete. Vive la Revolucion Francaise! Vicente then spread the straw over the earth/clay mix, poured water into the mix and invited us to take off our shoes and jump into the mud. I kept my shoes on while others joyfully squished and squashed and massaged the mix with their bare feet.

So there it is. The recipe for adobe: 1 part earth, 1 part clay, chopped straw and water. The mud is then poured into a square form that has been oiled and watered and the square brick is compacted in the form and then slipped out of the form to dry in the sunlight (for a couple of weeks).  

Vicent told us that he had seen quite a lot of this adobe construction for homes in a recent trip through the back country of Guatemala. He had also seen a stove made within a large metal pail. That was the next task. With few pieces of "ladrillo," a kind of rounded clay tile, and with some of the adobe mud, Vicent had us shaping a stove inside the pail.

First, a portion of the metal pail was cut open to form the mouth of the stove. The "ladrillo" pieces were washed with mud to help with the exterior bonding to the adobe mud that would later surround the clay tiles in the pail. So -- cheating a bit with cement mixed with adobe for a base, the "ladrillo" pieces were inserted in the pail to allow a small entrance for oxygen and to form a rounded pipe reaching up to the rim of the pail. The idea is to concentrate high heat with a minimum of wood for fuel. The mud was put all around the pipe and entrance chamber and left to dry.

Seeing Vicent working so quickly at the project, I commented that he must have done this before. In his mix of French, Spanish, and English he said that he had the knack of seeing how a thing works the first time and then being able to replicate it. He also said that there are many ideas for these stoves available on the internet. I must be sure to invite Vincent to Belleville to help construct the clay oven we are planning to construct in our backyard this summer.