Burra Maluca

Judith Pi wrote:The oven works on a convection principle, and should work on the solid stove top if the hot air is allowed to rise and circulate. Try placing three coins or washers under the funnel part. I've read that it works with the Hajka camping oven.

Ah now THAT is the kind of tip I was hoping for. Thankyou!

I smell another experiment in the making...

Of course the silicone might leach stuff too. But I'm a bit limited in choice if I want to test stuff that shows up in rubble piles...

I wonder if anyone makes a stainless version?

Toxic gick would be my concern too.

We do occasionally score whole truck loads of wood salvaged from renovation jobs and if we're sure it's toxin-free we'll bring it home. Here's a load we got a week or so back.



There are enough rotten bits we're sure it's not been treated in any way so we were happy to accept it. But there are so many nails in it it has no real value for anything other than burning. We just saw it, split it if necessary, feed it to the rocket mass heater and sieve the ash later to remove any nails.

I also have these bits of old barrel staves that I need to finish turning into a fruit tray, if the dragons don't pinch it to go sledging with...

Parsnip soup with linseed rolls.

Possibly the best soup I've ever had in my life!

I think so.

The way I'm imagining it was that a young family moved onto the land, built themselves their very own home with their very own hands, then over the years, maybe generations, they started to construct the terraces. Then the family grew and one of the offspring got married and built a near identical 'hovel' that is the original house here. Then as they developed more skills at cutting stone they built the house up. Then around 80 years ago another generation decided to upgrade and built the brick house we now live in, in the traditional style of animals-at-the-bottom people-on-top.

People still live in these conditions here, especially older folk who have always lived in these old houses and have no desire to live anywhere else.

This is a photo taken four years ago of a member of the national guard delivering christmas supplies to an elderly gentleman in a house very similar to what others might call a hovel.



There's something so incredibly Portuguese about this photo.

From the policeman with a gun and the prettily wrapped pressies, to the totally unmodernised house with the guy inside who looks quite happy to live his life out there thankyou very much, to the huge stash of orange peels on the doorstep that have been collecting over the last few weeks since the oranges have ripened.

Also that nail above the door with the blue baling twine. I guess that's where the chickens get hung before they're brought inside to go in the pot...

Nathanael Szobody wrote:many Europeans used to keep the animals below. In the winter their heat helped warm the house above.

Oh absolutely! The new-fangled brick built house we are in now was like that - downstairs was full of animal keeping stuff and decades-old goat bedding, while the stairs to the upper part were on the outside of the house and all the domestic stuff happened up here. Our old stone-built farm was like that too. The original stone-built one here though was just single story, as per the photo below.

Looks to me like the lower upper sections were both original;  

Well they're certainly both stone, but they look to me like they were built out of different batches of stone.



I drew a line in to show where I think the original went up to. It seems to me that the lower part is the same stone and construction type as our original house here. I believe the two properties were owned by the same family at some point, so it's possibly the same builder, or at least taught by the same person, using stone gathered from the area with a few larger pieces like lintels and jambs cut from the local mountain, likely whilst making terraces.



But then above that line the stones used are bigger, with cut faces. My guess is that as the terraces were being cut into the mountain above, some of the better bits of stone were used to build the second layer on the house, leaving the rest for constructing the terrace walls. As far as I can tell they cut as high up as they can to create a level-ish bit of land then use the stone to construct a wall a little bit lower down the slope. Our top terrace is just cut into the mountain at the back with lovely old stonework as it drops to the terrace below.

This photo shows Austin examining a young tree growing near the back of our top terrace, showing where the terrace has been cut into the soft rock of the mountain.



And this photo, taken from lower down the mountain, shows him standing right at the front of our top terrace above the wall made from the rock they cut out.



My feeling is that if the upper and lower parts of my son's house were built at the same time, the larger, square-cut stones would have been used at the bottom, not the top.

Leonardo Bevilacqua wrote: is it worth spending extra money for better quality firebricks, or would basic hard firebricks be equally good for the job?

We built one two seasons ago in Portugal using basic firebricks bought off the shelf. They work well BUT two seasons in a couple of them have cracked.

When we bought our new place, we would drive past this abandoned house next door. Which had 'for sale' painted on the front, and the owner's phone number.



Rather a fascinating stone structure, and close enough to our place that we didn't want to risk anyone we didn't like buying it. To cut a long story short, it is now my son's home!

I thought some of the early photos we took of it would fit in well in this thread.



It was obviously built in stages, with different materials used at each stage. Possibly a generation apart each time?



Pennywort, moss and lichen growing on some of the stones in the walls.



From the other side, it's even more obvious that the lower part was built first, then the upper part with larger and better cut rocks, then a brick and block built afterthought at the back.

The front bit, holding up the balcony, is also a bit of a mystery. It looks like it was part of something larger that once extended further forward.



The door to the lower part of the house. I think this was originally a house, but since the top bit was added it's only been used for animals or storage.



It's not really visible in the photo, but there's an animal feeding trough running all along the back wall. No proper floor. And just junk, and a pair of ladders.



The wood in the ceiling looks a bit suspect, though that main bean is rather fascinating.



Rather a nice little balcony. I wonder how sound it is...



There appears to be rebar visible through the gaps in the concrete holding it up...



And this is the back extension. Made out of a hotch-potch of cement blocks and brick, not very well laid, not in very straight lines, and not going straight up in some places.

It also has much older tiles than the rest of the roof. I suspect the main bit of the house has had a new roof at some point and the older tiles were used on the extension.



Let's have a look inside the back bit. It's split into two rooms, which I think have been added separately. I suspect the far one was originally a pig pen or chicken run which then had an extension added, then got the walls built right up and a roof added.



There are three giant steps up into the top part of the house. Rock for scale, though the steps are so big they make him look rather small.



This is the little room at the back, after we'd cleaned the junk out. That far corner is all sooty and had a heap of ashes and cinders. I'd been told that old houses just burned in the corner of the rooms and the smoke escaped via gaps between the roof tiles.  This seems to confirm!



The main room upstairs. Complete with bed and cupboards. The floor was dodgy enough that we did not step on it until we'd laid boards over, and even then we were careful.



That wall had been rendered once upon a time!



The rendering was loose and had lifted enough for potter wasps to make their nests behind it.



Rather fascinating, but I think they're going to have to go I'm afraid...



We had to rip the old floor and beams out. I think they're past the point of attempting to salvage them!



This was the view from the top of those giant steps after we ripped the floor out and had started to replace the beams.



To our utter delight, that ancient old (chestnut?) beam was still sound, so we kept it.



As soon as the new floor was laid, my son wanted to move in, so he loaded up the wheelbarrow and off he went...



... and called it home.

We've done a lot more work since then, including a new roof, but there is still plenty to do to keep him busy for a while.



And this is the view from the balcony.



Although the structure isn't uninhabited any more, I think the photos still add to this thread. And might help give a bit of a happy ending to everyone who felt a bit sad seeing other structures gradually return to the earth.

I grind the flaxseed about a third of a cup at a time in the vitamix. Not too much otherwise the oil starts to come out and clags everything up. I usually keep going until I have a big glass jar full and use as needed until I run out.

I just took this photo in case it helps any...



I use golden linseed because the brown makes everything look just a bit too rustic and healthy, even for my taste!

Then for six biscuits I use a cup of linseed/flaxseed meal, a cup of self raising flour and about half a teaspoon of baking powder. I did experiment without the baking powder to see if the self-raising flour was strong enough to make the whole mixture rise, but it wasn't. I might add a pinch of salt and a few dried herbs if I think it will go well with whatever I intend to serve them with, then add milk bit by bit and stir until if forms a dough.

I cut the dough in half, then each half into three, roll each sixth into a rough biscuit or bread roll shape and put them in the stove top oven and cook them on a very low flame for thirty minutes.

We both have, um, 'healthy appetites' to put it mildly and three biscuits make with half flaxseed is quite enough as they are really filling.

This is rapidly becoming a cold-weather favourite - black eyed peas with smoked paprika, a good handful of mixed meaty and skinny bits, peppers, mushrooms, and fried onions. Served with biscuits made with half wheat flour and half flaxseed meal.



It's incredibly filling, and it helps me get through the enormous stash of flaxseed I laid in at the start of the pandemic. I have no idea how long that stuff lasts but it's doing well so far. I have a barrel full of whole golden linseed and grind up about a pound at a time as I figure it won't keep as well once it's ground up. The oil content in it means that I don't have to add fat to the biscuits, which keeps the cost down. Though we do tend to butter them unless we serve them with gravy.