Constructing Eco Stoves

We have made friends with a few Peace Corps volunteers (Annie, Dee, Madye, and Matheo) who live near us. Dee and Annie are in the middle of making eco stoves for their communities and needed help. Panamanian women often have respiratory infections and disease from inhaling the smoke from their "stoves" which consists traditionally of 3 rocks placed close enough together to hold a pot with space underneath for wood. However, these stoves are always semi-indoors resulting in poor ventilation. It is also rainy season for 9 months here leaving the wood always slightly wet which makes more smoke when cooking. Dee and Annie found a clay source and the production begins. 

To start, we drive 1 hour to a farm that has a good source of clay. We have to dig under the top layer to find the clay. I always thought red dirt was clay...wrong. Here, we are looking for the silvery clumps which naturally stick together like play dough. We fill the equivalent of 40 - 5 gallon buckets and load them into the back of Fred (Joy's truck we get to drive). 

The next day, back at Dee's house, we mix clay with sand and add some cement on top for good luck. Then comes the water and hay. Mixing the water in is just like mixing cement or pasta dough. You make a volcano of the dry ingredients (a mound with a hole), pour the water in the hole and slowly mix the dry ingredients in little by little until the consistency is right. 

Then when it resembles muck, it's ready to be pushed into the molds. 

Here are two examples of finished products. Dee's host mom made soup for lunch on one of the eco stoves that she's had for a few weeks. She loves it! No respiratory problems for her! 

A BIG thanks  to Dee and Annie for inviting us to come and help. It was a great learning experience. Next on our want-to-build-eco-thing production list - an eco oven (aka earth oven or those really cool out door bread ovens)!! I don't know when we'll get to do that, but we really would love to try some day. I'm pretty sure we can talk my dad into letting us make one in his back yard. What do you say dad? I know you want an earthen bread oven!!! Maybe next year we'll be able to show pictures of an oven we built. 

Oh, and I had to show these...Kyle LOVES berry picking! We make wonderful smoothies every day with these puppies from our back yard. 

Our bananas are ripening