Annual Newsletter 2007_Full.pdf - Department of History, UC Berkeley

That fall, when we returned to Iowa City, where I taught at the University of Iowa for a number of years, I felt compelled topractice and refine my newfound skills, this time in the 300-year-old black oak in our backyard. Here it is -- a somewhatdifferent style, with cross-hatched ropes instead of found wood to make the safety railings.Once I had run out of trees in need of development, I looked for a new outlet for my handiwork. A summer camp that mydaughter attended had a wood-burning beehive oven made out of stone, sand, and clay. I wanted to make one for ourbackyard, so I found another how-to book. The Iowa soil has plenty of clay, I scrounged broken paving stones fromneighbors, and used sand from the kids' sandbox (by then seldom used). I rounded up some friends from our Iowa Cityneighborhood, and we went at it on the weekend before Thanksgiving.