Off to Europe

Today we leave for a two month teaching tour of Europe.  This trip will take us to 5 countries including England, Estonia, Denmark, Slovakia and France.  Why those countries?  I have no idea, all I can say is that we left all decision making to our European friends and from there they mapped out our program.  The workshops we will be teaching will be centered around clay and lime work with plasters, floors and sculpting.  The thought of it all is a tad bit intimidating, that many week long workshops will definitely stretch our physical limits, it’s dawning on me that I’m not 25 any more.  One of our main motivations for creating this blog was to stay in touch with our friends while we travel and teach so if you are interested, there is a subscribe option toward the bottom of the page that will notify you when we post a new entry.

After our first post we planned a few more before we left, but as so often happens, a number of things have kept us busy almost beyond belief.  We’ve been to San Diego to teach an earthen floors workshop, dealt with a 4,000 acre fire that surrounded our property and most enjoyably worked with our friend Don Juan Morales exploring the old Mexican art of making “pulque” from an agave (century plant) that we planted about 8 years ago for that purpose.  Any one of these topics warrant a post in themselves, for now the best I can do is to include a few photos. 
Our houses showing burn areas below and to the left.
Burned area on the hills above the house.
Installing the finish layer of the earth floor in San Diego

Almost finished floor minus final detailing.

Don Juan standing in front of agave row.  I don’t have time to write about the whole process, but it’s totally fascinating and fun.  Here’s a link to a site with a general overall description of pulque and the process of making it.   //newfarm.rodaleinstitute.org/international/pan-am_don/sept04/pulque.shtml
Don Juan extracting “agua miel,” the liquid secreted by the agave that is turned into “pulque.”





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2 Comments

  1. Bill – such incredibly well done lens crafting! This presence stands all on it’s own on the pix alone. Perfect captures, enchanting color ranges. I hope you don’t mind me splashing some of them around the net…

  2. Hi, I like the more detailed story about Denmark, would be nice to hear more also about Estonia, but I might just have to ask Alex 🙂

    Looking forward to hear about the further adventures! Greetings to the family from all of us(also from Valters to Kalin), have a great time, enjoy!

    Kristine, Latvia

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