[Cob] mechanical mixing, cows.. etc.

[Copper Harding]

I actually have the luck to live in farm country.  I
tried two places to "borrow" a cow.  At first for a
week and then for the summer.  I promised feeding etc.
 Most farmers don't want to take a cow out of
production or are selling the end product for ..
well.. you don't want to know... but working it isn't
in their best interest.  If it were a different time
of year I could buy an old dairy cow on her way to
slaughter.

The realistic way to do a mix with a cow is to buy
one.  I don't have the ability to shelter (over
winter) one and couldn't handle giving one such a
short life span otherwise.  I might, with the right
set-up, in the future consider purchasing a cow for
long-term cob use as well as.. well milk or meat.

As for all of the mixing methods.. It depends upon
quality control.  Period.  You can have a bad mix with
any method you use.  Look, listen, touch, squeeze,
throw... whatever it takes for you to best figure out
what is a good mix.

I know a woman that has only every cobbed using heavy
heavy duty rubber gloves.  For her to tell what is a
good mix - she has to feel it through those gloves
otherwise her sense of the mix is off.  Me - I have to
take off the gloves and either use my feet but
preferably my hands.  

I'm probably somewhat insane (don't do this at home)
and mix with the tiller barefoot.  I pretty much know
when it's a good mix.  I tend to have a heavy heavy
layering of materials and only mixe down 8 inches or
so and so the bottom layer ends up being a "hardened"
cob pad that is the last to be pulled up at the end of
the season.  I do know that the longer I till the
shorter the pieces of straw.  I seem to add more straw
to a tilled version of cob than a version that is foot
mixed.  I'd say the same of the heavy machine mix.  A
chunk of straw is chopped by the mixing process and
when things are really "close" then the last bit of
straw is added for a nice cob.

If I'm corbelling then I mix in extra straw by hand. 
But that's a different story.  I really do think that
it totally depends upon quality control.  If you're
mixing in a tractor/cat then you are best served by
having someone on the ground directing where it's too
sandy and where it needs more mixing.  I do, also,
think that having your machine operator have
experience in mixing cob by foot makes all the
difference in the world.

I also think that if you don't have frost, and a
"building season" then your decision-making process is
different.

Oh boy.  I do wander on...   :)


_________________________
Ms. Copper Harding

If you can walk, you can dance
If you can talk, you can sing  --- from Zimbabwe

When you're out of balance
  gravity tends to get you down. -L.L. Harding

612.518.6199

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com