Throughout the Summer months, The Flying Potter has been visiting an amazing community project on the outskirts of Hereford.
Growing Local
Growing Local is a community interest company (CIC) that encourages and educates communities to grow, cook and eat local food.
They occupy a 19-acre site on the southern edge of Hereford and although Growing Local have only been there for a couple of years, the development has been rapid and impressive.
Organic & agro-ecological methods
The site boasts a number of polytunnels packed full of organically grown goodness and a wonderful children’s educational garden complete with an outside kitchen.
Enter the dragon…
As part of the exciting and ongoing development, staff and volunteers built a gigantic, double chambered, cob pizza oven in the educational garden. All they needed to complete the design – a giant dragon sitting on top!
The group decided they needed outside help to realise their dragon design and contacted Jon at Eastnor Pottery. Having constructed several cob ovens and earth sculptures, Jon jumped at the chance to collaborate.
Sculpting the monster
What a herculean effort! All ages, all abilities puddling, pummelling and moulding the monster into shape. It took two days and many hands to complete the work with incredible and generous contributions from the adult volunteers. It never ceases to amaze the pool of talent that exists in a group of people coming together over a common task. The chap below used a life time of experience working in the construction industry to fashion a chin support for the dragon’s jaw – assembled from scrap wood and screws in a matter of minutes – amazing!
Children’s tile making project
Once the dragon oven had dried sufficiently, local children were invited to the garden to write dragon stories, make ceramic tiles for the base of the oven and best of all, eat lots of fresh, woodfired pizza topped with delicious ‘Growing Local’ fayre. All pizzas cooked to perfection in the dragon oven. What a creative and wholesome day!
Once the tiles have been fired, they’ll decorate the concrete blocks that make up the oven stand and base.
