Pizza Oven Rebuild

We have had a pizza oven in the Wilderness Hideaway for a few years now but as you can see it was in need of a rebuild.

The first problem was finding enough time to put aside to building the oven as I needed 3 days within a week when I was free - I settled on the May bank holiday weekend as the perfect time due to the glorious weather and some keen volunteers.

My first job was to destroy our current oven. The oven had slowly been degrading in the rain due to the fact the parachute had been down for a vast majority of the winter while tree surgery work took place.

Old Pizza Oven

Luckily on the first day Stuart who had built the first oven returned from National Trust Woolacombe to help me out for the day.

The first stage after levelling our base was to build a sand dome. This was built on top of some previously laid fire bricks.

Once the sand dome had been created (this took four bags of red builders sand) you then need to lay wet newspaper on top of the dome. This is so that when you dig out the sand from under the clay layer you know when to stop digging!

Now is the time to get your feet muddy, we did a mixture of two parts sand to one part clay. We laid out a piece of tarpaulin and added our mixture on top and then slowly added water and paddled the mixture with our feet in till it was the right consistency.

It is good at this point to have lots of helpers to speed the process up. Once the mixture was as desired, you then start to make 'bricks' out of the clay and build up around the sand dome. The way I judged the mixture was to create a ball of clay and drop it down and if it held its shape then it was the right consistency.

Building up our first layer

Once the dome is completed it must be left to dry out a little - I left ours over night.
The next day I returned to add on an insulating layer, this is the same ratio of sand and clay but with straw added in for insulation and here I am enjoying getting messy again.

Just before I added the insulating layer on I cut out the door and the chimney - I found the correct calculations for the door height and width online.
Once I was happy that the door was correct I started to add the next layer on - using the same method as before by creating them into bricks and building the pizza oven up.

Once the second layer was complete; this also had a days drying time before I came back to do the third and final layer. I put the third and final layer on with a sand and clay mix. I added some detail to my final layer to create a mystery creature.

All we now have to do is start the drying out process by lighting a very small fire within the oven and slowly drying out the clay. I will try and light a fire in the oven everyday for a week and slowly build the fire's size up each time. By being patient I hope to make sure I do not create any cracks and slowly prepare it for a busy summer season of pizza cooking for our visiting school groups and our Wild Wednesday and Fun Fridays sessions.
Having had my first experience of building a pizza oven I  am now inspired to build myself one at home.

Please feel free to ask any questions if you also would like to have a go, I am happy to give you more detail.

Holly Purdey

Ranger

Just thought I would give you a little background to the Arlington farm sheep.

There have been sheep at Arlington for many years and our existing Jacob flock are descendants of Miss Chichesters own sheep that she gave to the NT when she gave Arlington in 1949. At present we have 63 breeding ewes all of which are pedigree Jacobs. We mated them in November to two of our rams. The legend Dirk the Dorset ram got most of the ewes. The idea is that Dorset cross lambs fatten a lot faster than pure Jacob lambs.
Ken our Pure Jacob ram got the rest and the few lambs produced by this small number of ewes should give us enough pure Jacob ewe lambs to replace some of our older ewes. This means we do not have to buy any in. Ken has been with us for several years so we have just purchased a new ram to replace him.

Usain is our new ram from the Dalewode flock in East Devon. Its a very good flock with many champions so we are looking forward to some excellent lambs in 2014.

The sheep are used to graze in the park and some of the smaller grasslands around the estate. They keep the sward open and will eat some of the bramble. Sheep are a little un-selective in the way they graze meaning that they can graze out wild flowers if not carefully managed.

Murray Sharpe Outdoor Manager.



Usain





Ken



Dirk



Worming time for our Sheep

Worms are internal parasites in sheep and worming is vital to keeping our sheep flock healthy. Worms can cause a variety of problems including weight loss, diarrhoea, coughing and general unthriftiness. We use a combinex sheep wormer for our sheep.

Worming involves getting our sheep into our sheep pens and running them all through the sheep race recording their indivdual tag number as they get their dose of wormer. We must record their tags numbers to record it all in our stock book. This is very important as once a sheep has been given a wormer than they must not be entered into the human food chain for a set period of time, in our case combinex withdrawal period is 56 days.

We use a drenching gun to adminster our wormer. This is very important due to the fact that the amount of wormer given is based on the sheeps weight and therefore having a drenching gun ensures the correct amount is given due to the fact you can calibrate the number of mls given.

We have had wonderful hot weather this week and although I will not complain, this did make it rather hot work for working with the livestock and I have finished this week feeling battered and bruised after being pushed around by our sheep.

I ended up standing in the sheep races as they went through as I found it was the most efficent way but this did mean that the sheep were constanly bashing the back of my legs. One particuly lively lamb decided to headbutt my shin with its newly growing horns which caused a lot more pain then I was expecting from a tiny lamb.

However once they were all out in the field and enjoying the sun again I could not help but forgive them.

Holly Purdey

Ranger

Welcome to our brand new blog for the Ranger Team!

Our team is made up of Outdoors Manager Murray Sharpe, Ranger Holly Purdey and our two Seasonal Rangers Steve Philp and Richard Catlin.

We begin this blog following the end of our lambing and calving season - We have 63 pedigree Jacob ewes and 10 Ruby Red Devon breeding cows.

As summer approaches we are also entering into our busy visitor season for the property and the wider estate.