SUNSET – We first featured our backyard adobe oven in our August 1971 issue. It’s modeled after mud-brick ovens used around the world, from the Southwest to Mexico, Italy, and France.

Building it takes about two days of grubby work; it speeds up building to have two or three people making the thick-walled adobe shell, the mass of which stores the heat of the fire. The reward: wonderfully rustic pizzas, roasts, vegetables, and crusty loaves of bread from your own backyard.

Materials and Tools

You’ll find most of the materials you need at a home center or building supply yard, except for the cardboard barrel, often used by movers. (You cut it in half lengthwise and use it to form the oven’s curving top.) Look in the yellow pages under Barrels & Drums for a local source.

• 14 concrete building blocks (8 by 8 by 16)
• 14 concrete cap blocks (8 by 2 by 16)
• 68 firebricks (2 ½ by 4 ½ by 9)
• One 28- to 30-gallon cardboard barrel
• One empty 1-quart can
• 6-foot square of 6-inch wire mesh (used to reinforce concrete driveways)
• 10 feet of 30-inch-wide chicken wire
• 4 feet of rough-sawed redwood 2-by-4
• 2 feet of redwood 1-by-3
• 16 1 ½-inch deck screws
• 3 feet of 6-inch-wide aluminum flashing
• Eight large wheelbarrow loads of adobe soil (heavy clay garden soil)
• Three bags Portland cement
• 1-foot square of ¼-inch galvanized wire mesh
• Exterior latex paint
• Optional: 24 precast 1- by 2-foot concrete steppingstones

You’ll also need a tape measure, hacksaw, pencil, circular saw with masonry bit, wire cutters, saber saw, drill, screwdriver, large wheelbarrow, hoe, shovel, sturdy rubber gloves, sponge, small piece of scrap lumber or plywood, old towels, and plastic tarp.

View  step-by-step building instructions »

Adobe oven heating guide »

If you have the property and the means to begin a vegetable garden and an orchard, I strongly suggest preparing for this today. There are plenty of resources and gardening communities available online to help you get started. From photo groups on flickr, to gardening forums.

If you do not have land, the most you could do is store the ingredients for a crop now, should you need to Get Out Of Dodge and hunker down. The Survival Seedbank offers a variety of heirloom seeds that cover an acre. While supplies last, they’re going for around $145 a seedbank.

“By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.”
- Ben Franklin

If you’re a country music fan, you’ve probably heard ol’ Bocephus singing A Country Boy Can Survive. It’s a great classic song that rings true with many Americans who were fortunate to grow up in an area that taught self-reliance.

I have found many resources on the internet that give great information about food storage, shelf life, and nutritional values. I implore all who read this (including myself) to educate yourself on these things and ultimately begin stockpiling your food and water supply. Global economic woes, natural disasters, or a full fledge wartime invasion would have devastating effects on the supply chain. As a father or husband we need to learn how to become self reliant and get past our natural tendencies to put stuff off until later.

There is so much to learn and so much TO BUY that if you don’t start now you will regret it down the road. This is precisely why we started this website… to get people (and ourselves) on the track to self reliance and survival readiness.

Big Stick, out.

Freeze Dried Foods for light and easy storage.

There’s actually a sale going on at the Earth Wave store, for their freeze dried foods in bulk.

LINKS on FOOD STOCKPILING:

• Food Stockpiling by Grattan Woodson, MD FACP
• FEMA- Food
• One Pot Recipes for Non-perishable food
• Why Buy Dehydrated Food (7-30 year shelf life)
• Prudent Food Storage
• US DEPT of Ag- Old Stockpiling Pamphelts
• Alpine Survival Foods

8: But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel. I Timothy 5:8 HOLY BIBLE (KJV)