Day before yesterday Henry was digging some holes in the old garden with the backhoe part of the tractor to see if the ground was stable enough to put his new shop/garage there. (see earlier post - He was really just playing on the tractor. It is way too wet to be tractoring right now!) After a bit he came in, very frustrated because the wet dirt, a sort of whitish "Junk" wouldn't come out of the bucket after he had scooped it up - even with water squirted out of the garden hose! He was one unhappy guy.
"What sort of dirt is whitish-grey?" he asked, "And really sticky!"
"Ummm, clay, maybe?" I responded. "Do we even have clay around here? All this red soil is because of the Cinnabar, is there clay in Cinnabar?"
"I don't know, but this stuff is brutal! It won't come out of the bucket... come see".
So I went out to see. We seem to have TWO colors of clay; a very pure-looking grey and a more ochre one. The are in the bottom of two of Henry's holes... about eight feet from each other. This is very cool, indeed. My own clay!!
When I went to unload the Glaze kiln yesterday, I took some of it with me. Ted said there is quite a lot of clay around this area. He digs clay from a pit on his property and fires it in his wood-fired kiln; that sounds pretty cool.
I made a couple of test tiles, some of each color (they may fire the same color - we'll see) to put into the next glaze kiln, and a shrink-test to put into the bisque. Then I used the rest of the white clay to make a really primitive pinch-pot tea bowl (Mrs. P would have been proud) that we'll bisque on Saturday, and depending on its survival, glaze on Wednesday next.
The last glaze kiln comes out on Friday... then the "Clay Place" is no more and I'll have to work on getting my own kiln, or finding somebody who will fire my stuff. It will all work out, I guess. I'd hate to stop right now, because I'm really getting the feel for clay again, and getting much better. Not where I was before, but it is coming back to me.
That sure is some pretty clay you dug up...free clay, not that would be perfect. And that is one FINE tractor. I'm a tractor girl wannabe. Grew up riding on the fender of my grandpa's tractors. I do have a Husqvarna lawn tractor to play with though, even have my own cart for hauling and it has hauled! Has a cute dumper release on it so I can dump dirt, slides right off it most of the time, unless there is clay involved, lol.
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