Tracton Community Oven, Cork, Ireland

One advantage of having this blog and my Quest for Oven web pages is that I sometimes get information coming to me instead having to search it all out on my own.

In this case, I received an e-mail from Ireland telling me about a plan to build a community oven there (the first one in Ireland that I am aware of).

As of 10/13/2012 it's a project in progress, but the place where it is being built has a Facebook community organization page. (See the post for October 10.)

I have run across other art centers where a community oven has become part of the activities.

It's good to see the zeal for community ovens catching on in Ireland.

Nov. 17, 2012: I just checked their Facebook page again, and there is now a photo album titled Tracton Community Oven with 16 pictures in it, apparently added Nov. 1, 2012. Looks good. I could not tell much about the style of the oven or its size from what I saw.

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).

Homeadow Song Farm, Cincinnati, Ohio

Sometimes you discover something that defies categorization. For me, Homeadow Song Farm, Cincinnati, Ohio, is one such case.

• First, it is has a cob oven.
• Second, it is a farm.
• Third, it is a school.
• Fourth, it is sometimes used as a community oven.
• Fifth, sometimes they teach baking classes there.

Vicki Mansoor told me a bit about how they have used their oven. (A new one is being built.)

I used the oven throughout the school year for an early childhood
program. The children are given dough, sing and talk and make all
kinds of shapes. They put them on the bread board and out to the
dragon oven they went. Sometimes the children stay and watch.
Sometimes they carry the hot bread back on their little boards.
We eat it with our butter and honey from our bees.

Our grade school program uses it at times. We roast corn, dry squash, make soulcake breads at halloween, pumpkin pies, etc.

I bake loaves for myself and a few others, along with dinner; neighbors add theirs too. We have had community festival/parties where we make pizzas. We have invited people to come bake their own loaves and bring one to share.

And, we have given bread baking workshops occasionally - with a guest baker and more.

It sounds like a real gem of a place.

TNF Community Oven SF, San Francisco, California

Sometimes I get lucky right away. And sometimes I have to do a bit of detective work to trace down what I am really looking for.

My Google Alert found a post about a dance show called "Our Daily Bread." This post mentioned, "the outdoor pizza oven which is a community oven for the neighborhood’s enjoyment."

I was eventually able to contact the dancer and choreographer Amara Tabor-Smith, who put me in touch with Daryl Smith, who kindly furnished me with some pictures of what is called the Tenderloin National Forest.

With that name as a clue, I was able to find a few more links that were related. (There is even a page for the Tenderloin National Forest that mentions the oven.)

There was another post about Amara Tabor-Smith, a picture of the oven on flickr, and an older page about the history of the Tenderloin National Forest.

Daryl Smith (in an e-mail to me) said, "The oven's use is always a supervised activity, usually by me or someone from our group who has been oriented to all safety issues related."

The oven now appears on my map of US community ovens, and I have created an entry for it on my community oven page.

LoveTree Farmstead, near Grantsburg, Wisconsin

Going over my information about "pizza farms," I thought should include that I discovered before I started blogging about what I have been finding.

The LoveTree Farmstead, near Grantsburg, Wisconsin, has been getting some mention in the Twin Cities' press. They started a "pizza by the pond" business to take advantage of their own cheeses. (As far as I know, this is unique among "pizza farms.")

Another difference between "pizza by the pond" and other "pizza farms" is that they have a cob, not a brick, oven.

It's a ways away from the Twin Cities, but there have been expeditions there.

They have a Facebook group.

Community Oven, Penrith, Cumbria, United Kingdom

My Google Alert pointed me to an organization in Penrith, Cumbria, United Kingdom that had plans for community ovens.

The organization was named Penrith Action for Community Transition (PACT).

They have many projects underway, but their community oven project has its own page.

It's also a topic on their site that you can search for related pages.

Here is their YouTube video of building a cob oven at Newton-Rigg.

Fire Fly Farm, Saint Albans, Maine

Billi Barker has a blog entry about her farm and related businesses with a 2010 year-end summary.

There are several pictures of a cob oven that she built on her farm. (There were no easily identified blog posts about the oven.)