Cob and Harvest - by Steven Miller, Garden Intern Summer 2015

This week at Songaia has offered some new experiences, some of which I’ve really wanted to get involved with over the years.  Evan, Brian and I spent 3 days laying out the foundation and designing the roof structure for the cob oven. 

First we removed the dirt and leveled the ground for a nice surface to build on. Once we had pulled out all of the sod and dirt we dug the back two footers and filled them with cement and the brackets for the roof beams. 

This past week has been very productive and we’ve spent many hours harvesting lots of food. Some of the week’s things of abundance have been plums, blackberries, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, and garlic. 

Garlic Bulbils

We needed to make sure the brackets were level and plumb (of course) so we installed temporary posts and braced them off so the cement would dry the brackets in place. 

We started building a retaining wall that will stand behind the oven and keep the soil from eroding and collapsing. 

It wasn’t all cob oven work either; we also spent time doing the usual ongoing task of fixing and maintaining irrigation. Patricia, Kai, Evan and I replaced the old irrigation in the circle garden and hopefully will revive a lot of the plants in there for next season. 

I burned weeds on the path to Life Song Commons and also replaced and moved some drip line throughout their garden as well. 

Something I’ve also been interested in getting more hands on instruction with is the preservation of foods, I had the chance to harvest some rose petals and take my hand and rose jam but it didn’t quite turn out. It was a good first go anyway!