Two-day Cob Oven Building Workshop w/ Mark Mazziotti

6942 West Comanche Avenue,Tampa FL 33634

05 March, 2022

Description

Two-day Backyard Cob Oven Building Workshop w/ Mark Mazziotti Ever wanted a relatively easy way to have a backyard brick oven for making pizza and bread? You can be the talk of your neighborhood and organize parties and other events around the hearth of your beautiful new backyard cob oven. Though it costs far less and is much easier to build, a cob oven imparts the same wood-fired flavor on foods as a brick oven. Sign up for this multiday class at Sweetwater Farm and help build a cob oven for the farm while you learn the art of cob building and oven making. Then you can build one of your own in your yard. Cob is a very malleable natural building material made from just sand, clay, and straw. The ingredients in cob are totally natural, easily found in most places, and can be formed into any shape desired. Cob is incredibly easy to repair too. Just add water and reshape it. It does have to be protected from the elements, so part of any cob oven build is a roof shelter. In this class, under the instruction of natural builder Mark Mazziotti, we’ll build a wood-fired cob oven from start to finish in two days of classes. Get your fingers and your feet dirty learning to mix and mold cob from basic ingredients and shape it into an oven that can be used to bake pizza in 2 minutes with that authentic wood-fired flavor. But not only can you bake pizza, with one firing of the oven over the course of a few days you can bake, cook, and dehydrate all kinds of foods. You can even invite your neighbors over to use the oven once it’s hot. It’ll stay hot for several days. Participants in this class will learn as they help build a cob oven for Sweetwater Farm so we can host events around the oven in the future, such as pizza nights and bread bakes. This oven can even serve as a community oven for the local neighborhood. There is an option for an additional workshop day the Sunday before the cob oven workshop weekend to help build the foundation for the future cob oven. This day will not be led by Mark Mazziotti, but will still demonstrate some cob building techniques, as well as construction of the foundation of the oven, which is pretty useful to know if you plan to build one. This extra day requires purchase of an extra workshop ticket for $50. Instructor Bio: Mark Mazziotti discovered natural building in 2003 at a gathering in New Mexico. Ever since then he's had his hands and feet in the mix of techniques that make up this labor of love. He has a passion for low-tech cob ovens and rocket mass heaters and has recently advanced into the slightly higher-tech world of masonry heaters. Mark designed and built his own straw bale house at Red Earth Farms in Missouri where he currently resides. You can see some of his work at this link. Sweetwater Organic Community Farm was established in 1995 as a nonprofit community-supported urban organic farm and environmental education center in Tampa, Florida. We are located on 6 acres of suburban property along the Sweetwater Creek in Tampa’s Town ‘n’ Country neighborhood, in Hillsborough County, Florida. We operate a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Membership program, Sweetwater Sunday Farmers’ Market and Music Series open to the public, educational field trip programs for visiting groups, farm tours, workshops, outdoor movies, seasonal events, volunteer opportunities and more! Through our hands-on programs, visitors of all ages discover the wonders of nature, explore ecological interconnections, practice appropriate land stewardship and master sustainable agriculture techniques.  Our farm provides the freshest possible organic vegetables and herbs for hundreds of Tampa Bay residents each year. At Sweetwater, community members come together to grow and enjoy fresh organic food, acquire sustainable living skills, support local agriculture, enjoy nature, make new friends and be a part of the community.