Ground Levellers LOVE building gardens, little is more satisfying than shaping the earth with your bare hands (ok, playing on diggers and dumpers is also a lot of fun), but teaching wonder and curiosity and helping children connect the world we created, to the one we inherited, is particularly special.
We mess with the earth a lot and recognise our responsibility to encourage sustainable builds and recycle materials; so we regularly provide top-soil, off cuts and surplus materials to community groups, allotments and local artists - and of course to the schools we work with. The beautiful clay we dug out of Park Way just seemed too good to waste and inspired the guys to build a pizza oven. After the noticeably yummy success of the one we installed at Patricks' house, we knew owe could workshop it, and when we mentioned it to Hermitage Primary School (one of our oldest contracts) they were very interested.
We built the base, which has to be fire proof and high enough for an adult to tend to the pizza, and a stage so children across the school years could reach to get involved. Over the course of another three sessions (each layer needs time to dry), we built up the layers and created this little master piece.
What was particularly great about this is that it negated a problem we have year on year. The schools want to incorporate healthy eating and growing food, but managing this across a school takes commitment and they just don't have the resources to pay someone to take care of the allotments everyday. Sometimes a radical teacher will surprise us by dedicating their own time to watering and weeding, and scheduling classes to come out and do the same, but more often than not, it runs rampant at Easter and everything goes to seed over the six weeks holidays. Don't get us wrong, this is a valuable lesson for the kids too, but they never get to taste the fruits of their labour and so an opportunity to teach them about nutrition is lost too (which disappoints us as our schools lead Patrick studied nutrition at masters level).
By having a pizza oven, there is not only incentive, but opportunity to get cooking and lighting the pizza oven fire, always sparks conversation and invites investigation into where our food comes from. Everything tastes good on pizza, but is it good for you? Big questions for little people.
The important stuff:
An oven takes around 3-4 sessions to build. Pizza's take 3-4 minutes to cook!
If you are interested in a series of clay oven workshops or would like to invite us to tender for your grounds contract, please get in touch. Our SLA's with schools usually have workshops embedded in them and clay ovens can definitely be incorporated.