Gathering Round the (H)eart(h

from July 2022 Issue 164

Amplify Antioxidants

In these days of rampant inflation, perspective polarization, medical mayhem, and who-knows-what-weather on the horizon... a bit of good news can be hard to come by. With the loss of so many familiar patterns, many people are wondering, at some level or another: How are we gonna get through these troubles? I cannot claim to have all the answers. In fact, I’d say these days I am less certain of most things than ever. But I do have a sense that there are a few age-old practices that might help bring us back together. One of them is gathering together to share a meal among family, friends, and strangers alike.

For the better part of these past two months I have been spending time down in Centennial Park, working to restore the outdoor cob kitchen. Over the past few years it had fallen into disrepair, and there had been talk earlier in the year about tearing it down altogether. As one of the original builders of the kitchen 9 years ago, I found this talk very alarming; so much so that the starving-artisan in me offered to fix it for free. Fortunately the City of Duncan opted to revive it, and managed to scurry up some funding to help matters along.

Working on the kitchen again brought back some wonderful memories. So many people had a hand in the original building process. Sculptors, timberframers, potters, story-tellers, workshop facilitators, naturalbuilders... we were all hired into the mix; with each one of us bringing our expertise to the collaboration for a meagre recompense. It truly was a labour of love. But the community process ran so much deeper than that. Over the course of that summer we were visited by an amazing array of citizens stopping by to see what was going on. Quite a few people, particularly Elders tending the nearby gardens, were stirred to mention fond memories of growing up with some such community kitchen in their homeland. China, Russia, Austria, Peru, Spain, India, Sweden... Perhaps most poignant was the story shared by an elderly woman who grew up in a Ukranian community in rural Manitoba. She said every weekend the women of her village would gather round the big wood-fired community oven to bake the coming week’s worth of bread for all the households in the community. This was the time and place for people to catch up with one another, hang out, and share support as needed... whilst all at once tending to the most basic of necessities. And I could see by the tears welling up in her eyes as she spoke how much that childhood experience had meant to her.

Over the past 9 years, many a gathering has been held down at the Centennial Park kitchen. Countless hotdogs and sausages have been fried on the woodfired griddle, soups and stews boiled up on the open burner, and who-knows-how-many pizzas, crisps, and loaves of bread have been baked in the cob oven. I’ve heard a fair few chickens have been roasted in there too, and one christmas folks even roasted a duck. The sky is the limit really.

Another nice thing about this kitchen is that all three elements are powered by wood-fired rocket cores. This clean-burning technology dates back over 5,000 years in many regions of the world. In a rocket stove small sticks of wood are fed into a fire chamber and burn at their tips (like a cigar). The chambers are designed to draw all of the smoke/ gas released from the biomass into the flame path, where an optimal combination of time, temperature and turbulence (the ‘3-Ts’) result in complete combustion. The resultant heat is then concentrated directly into the cooking application.

For those who want to give the kitchen a try but are not sure about how to operate it, don’t worry – the Cowichan Green Community have agreed to manage the facility, and staff members will be happy to show you how to get things working. It is just a matter of giving them a call at 250 748 8506 to arrange a booking.