Peterborough Community Oven

Sometimes there are coincidences. I discovered that I had overlooked some details in a couple of my sources about information about community ovens for Peterborough.

Someone else reviewing my links pointed out that I had confused Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (which has a Facebook community organization page). with Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Oddly enough, while I have been able to find a couple of mentions of the oven at Peterborough, NH, there is a bit more available on Peterborough, Ontario.

For Peterborough, NH, I found these two references:

• "Kin Schilling ... organized school kids to build a community bread oven in Peterborough" (link)
• "[O]ur community kitchen, grill, fire pit and outdoor Cobb/wood-fired C/Pizza oven offer great opportunities for cooking, often in community." (link)

For Peterborough, Ontario, Canada, I found these links:

• Their Facebook community organization page
• Mention of a survey asking for input about the oven
• A more recent online article that mentions the outdoor brick oven

It's kind of interesting to contrast these two efforts. The NH oven is a cob oven built in 2009. The Ontario oven is planned to be brick, but isn't built yet.

There is something to be said for having a good oven now instead of a great oven sometime in the future. (These are not mutually exclusive alternatives.)

Regardless of those issues, I wish good luck to both community ovens, and I'm sorry I got them confused.

Point Douglas Community Oven, Point Douglas, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

A community oven project that I had filed under "Aspirational Community Ovens" (which is to say community ovens that might be built someday) moved forward to actual construction.

This was the North Point Douglas Women's Centre Community Oven Project (link). Their page shows some pictures of the construction and past updates for the project.

Some of the history of the project is recorded in the original blog post that I found that informed me about the project. That post mentioned some of the arts component of the project, which is made more clear by this invitation in a blog post to come and work on the mosaic that decorates the oven.

Interestingly, there is an community oven in Cringila, Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia with a mosaic (link).

North Adams Community Oven, North Adams, Massachusetts

Another recent addition to my list of US community ovens is the North Adams Community Oven, North Adams, Massachusetts (they have a Facebook community organization page).

There is a picture of the oven being built as part of this page about a related effort to create a local sourdough culture.

This oven will be near a community garden.

This oven is one of a few built as part of a larger arts project.

There are some other community oven projects in Massachusetts, but this one is close to New York, which also has a lot of community ovens.

Park Avenue Community Oven, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada

I received a lot of notifications about community ovens recently, both from Google Alerts and from e-mail.

One oven that I found out about is the Park Avenue Community Oven, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada. This makes it the first community oven I have found in Nova Scotia.

They also have a Facebook community organization page.

As with many community ovens in Canada, this one is located in a park (the Leighton Dillman Park on the Dartmouth Commons) and near a community garden.

They have gotten some local television coverage, which is quite rare for these kinds of projects. Also rare, is that they got substantial local funding ($20,000) to build the oven and its environs, so the whole project ought to be very well established. (I like how the TV segment mentioned that some other organizations are now interested in having community ovens of their own.)

There was also some related press coverage (echoed here).