building an outdoor oven
the importance of eating outside and together
Hello reader, thanks for being here! I’m Kana and this is Tending Gardens, which you can read about here. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.Â
I’ve written a couple of times about the sense of community I feel in Kamikatsu. When I think about what brings people together, I realize it’s almost always food. A dinner table is a unifying place where we gather to spend time with each other.
Alice Julier, author of the book Eating Together, shares how eating with others can shift our perspectives and help us change our understanding of different backgrounds. The dining table is an equalizer. It’s a place for minimized distractions and open conversations.
Julier’s advice for physical and psychological well-being is easy: Eat simply and eat together.
I also remember growing up and going to summer camp and any meal around the campfire felt special. Maybe it was the novelty of seeing blazing fire in contrast to the darkness of the night, or maybe it was the excitement of eating foods that were stapled campfire foods like smores. It felt carefree and simple. The ease at which we could laugh and be present made it feel special. It’s a different experience eating outdoors because we can leave the awkward table manners and just enjoy everything more simply.
A group of local people in Kamikatsu decided to create an outdoor stone kiln for baking pizza to honour being together and being outside. It was a project that would bring children and adults together over shared food and in the presence of nature. The idea was the create a space that would nurture a love for community, food, and the outdoors. In that sense, a pizza oven is a perfect project and symbol to tie people to those values.
It’s exciting to imagine a freshly baked pizza in the middle of the forest. The project to build an outdoor pizza oven started over a year ago and this past week I joined to help finish it. We hauled bags and bags of red dirt and mixed it with water and ash to create a paste. We took the paste and covered the exterior of the kiln, giving the oven an extra layer of protection.
This project was such a great experience because it allowed me to connect with local people. We were guided by locals who were born and raised in this community. There was a shared purpose and goal and that gave us the motivation to work together. Teamwork flourished because it was clear that more hands meant less individual labour and instead we feel a stronger sense of shared responsibility.
The whole process was quite laborious—hauling heavy bags and buckets of material and squatting for hours to mix dirt—but the elation of finishing the kiln was such a special moment. Our final (unexpected) touches to the oven included a set of eyes and a tiny hat on the top of its head. It made the kiln feel alive—as if it could, at any time, shart chewing anything else that entered its mouth.
It will take a couple of weeks for the clay to harden and then we can come back for a pizza party. It’s incredible what we’re willing to make time for if we’re motivated or we see value in it.
I hope this pizza oven brings people together—and serves as a reminder of the simple joys of shared food cooked in nature. Eating together shouldn’t be a chore or an appointment, but rather an opportunity to be present with who we love and nurture relationships.
That’s it for this week! Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead.
Take care,
Kana
I’d love for you to think of me as your penpal—sharing a note from a tiny village in Japan. With Tending Gardens, I want to bring you a small joy in the form of a newsletter. If you like it and want more like it in your inbox, consider subscribing.Â