'Marmite' sounds like a type of stone.

Lovers of stone and Marmite will enjoy this Valentine's Day statue covered in it. marmite‑statue‑valentine‑day.jpg

Battered or Kentucky Style Cheekend? #4

Cheeken' and chips perhaps?

Stone food. #3

A really heavy pound cake.

Whole Grain Food. #2

How about a hearty slice of handmade (okay, hand-photoshopped) stone-ground bread?

Stone made meals. #1

T.J. of Sydney Peek explained to us that flaming does not work on their quartzite-schist material for some strange reason. I had already found this out as we had tried to flame a piece to get rid of the saw marks and nothing happened. Usually you can make it nice and flaky. It occurred to me (carrying through on the farm-quarry produce analogy) that a good 'stone made meal' of 'schist kabob' might never get cooked properly?

Please send in more ideas of stone foods and menu creations that might make for a good solid meal.

Fresh from the quarry to your garden.

While the quarry at Sydney Peak is about as 'green' a quarry you can imagine (in California this is very important), it occurred to me that it is also very much a growing operation - growing not just in size and output, but in the way they access the stone material too. It's as if they are growing the stone. On my visit to the quarry this week I was taken by how similar some of the extracting and preparation operations were to farming and processing food, and how some aspects even looked the same.

As we walked into one section of the quarry, there were a dozen or so workers bent over picking the product the way you might see fruit or vegetables being picked in a field. It was being gathered and sorted and after being put onto metal crates it was then carried off by machinery in the same way you might see a large farm operation run.

The stones that the labourers were picking were literally popping out of the ground because the land had first been 'plowed' by one of these heavy pieces of equipment.

The huge cat goes back and forth over the same couple of acre quarry plots with the big prongs at the rear ripping up whole new layers of chunky bedrock for extracting. After all the stones are picked, the plow goes over it again.

Next, in the same way food is 'processed' so too, after being picked, a lot of the the quarried stone goes though a process too .

The stone processing plant

Specially cut stone packed in wooden crates and ready for market.

Here in the Sydney Peek plant the material can be cut and trimmed, sanded and/or polished and made into more refined products and specialty items. In some quarries the cut stone is flamed to give the sawn edges a rough natural look. After it is graded, it's carefully packaged and often, as with food, it's even shrink wrapped.

A piece of highly polished 'archalyte'

from a shrink wrapped crate of processed stone

The final product is shipped to market where consumers like you and I come to choose from a selection of the 'fresh cut' produce (or maybe some processed stone, but never the synthetic, artificial stuff ) and then we take it home and cook up some wonderful things with it.

Tomorrow let's look at what we might consider filling our 'pallets' with, and see what special stone dishes (served on stoneware perhaps?) a stone lover might come up with.

Gathering At Table

There have always been a lot of special meals at our Rocktoberfest gatherings. At this years festival Friday's lunch we provided for three dozen walling participants and then an evening 'meet and greet' with pizza spring rolls and chicken wings for 60 people. Then Saturday more great food at lunch and hefty buffet at the Ship's Galley with another 70 people and presentations on the Aran Island walls and dry stone abutments of New England covered bridges. And last night a Thanksgiving turkey buffet was provided for everyone at Caigers in Rockport Ontario, fifty or more wallers and enthusiasts didnt want to stop socializing and the presentations on Balmoral and music by Bobby Watt topped off the evening.

We always try to have the festival be something where people who attend not only come and are involved in some interesting dry stone wall project during the day but also come together to do things in the evenings, so that nobody feels left out.

As I looked at Norman leaning talking to one of the students at the end of day two, I thought how much it was like a gathering around the table to partake of food. Walling is all-fulfilling and totally satisfying, much like everyone gathering around for a good hearty meal.

Many people now have made our annual Rocktoberfest event part of their family's Thanksgiving celebration. The food and friendship is always good whether it be around the dinner table or around a stone wall.