Mud and Fire

For a little while now I’ve been looking forward to encouraging our Stepping Stones children to play with fire.

Of course, when I say “play” what I mean is to learn.

To learn from a place of joy, engagement and pure conscious mindfulness. Which is of course what young children are doing a hundred percent of the time anyway, before we adults get in the way.

A wonderful opportunity for what some call “risky-play” but might more accurately be described as safety-play.

But being who I am, I also wanted to pass on something that I’m passionate about.

For months now, I’ve been listening to permaculture podcasts and hearing about all these incredible low tech, low cost-technologies, like cob construction, rocket stoves and perhaps most exciting of all, rocket mass heaters!

Seriously look it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ptwncPImuo

I wanted to get my hands dirty, to experiment with it. I wanted to kindle the imagination and interest of the amazing kids that I’m so lucky to work with.

But where to start?

Somewhere small, something easy.

I decided the rocket stove would be the go. Also, we could use it to cook something in the process.

So, while digging holes and planting trees I made sure to collect clay whenever possible.

Once we had enough, the kids and I went to work, playing with mud.

It was a lot of fun, for the kids AND for me!

Essentially, we were using cob construction, i.e. a structure made with wet clay and straw.

Cob has been around for thousands of years and for good reason.

It’s dirt cheap (get it), applicable in just about any climate, it’s incredibly insulative for both temperature and soundproofing, it breathes and therefore doesn’t grow moulds and perhaps best of all, it’s natural.

As in free of carcinogens, those known and unknown, as opposed to many modern building materials, assuming of course you’ve sourced the earth from somewhere free of contamination.

With lots of little hands working and playing, we soon had a rudimentary rocket stove completed. However due to a host of reasons, it would be many weeks before we would get the opportunity to come back to finish the experience.

But with the coming of warmer weather, and fire-bans near on the horizon, we finally got to light it up.

Not only that, we went all out.

I decided to explore a Korean natural farming method with the kids, and we burned bones on the fire.

How metal is that!

Actually, that probably sounds a bit weird, but honestly, it’s a thing.

You can extract calcium-phosphate from burnt bones using vinegar, it’s a useful nutrient for gardening, anyway I don’t want to get too sidetracked. The point is the kids loved it! No one got burnt and we learned some cool stuff along the way.

Our rocket stove might not win any beauty contests, but it worked! It burned up our store of sticks and newspaper super fast and put some serious heat out of the top.

But the really cool thing is how much heat the earthen casing seemed to absorb. Even after I hosed it with water, it was radiating heat hours later. So I can fully appreciate how something larger, could warm a home or greenhouse for long periods of time and only requiring small pieces of wood as opposed to the big chunks of log used in a conventional fireplace.