THE Urban Bush-Carpenters’ workshop at CERES last month was on how to build bench seats. It was, needless to say, a tremendous success. We used pallets and bits and bobs collected hither and thither.

None of us had made a bench for a while, but Geoff dusted off our old design template for the legs and set about explaining the task at hand.

Our approach is quite simple – criss-crossed pieces, screwed and reinforced – but the trick is in getting the angles correct. This can take some trial and error to begin with. If you try, remember to make sure the seat is a nice height and depth, and the backrest is on a comfortable slant. Play around with the timber until it works. If in doubt, find a bench seat and copy its design.

Kavi, Thierry and Andy were hard at work, while Phil and Leharna streaked ahead of the rest.

And here are the three finished benches, together with their builders. As you can see, each bench – and each human – turned out different and beautiful, in their own way.

We’re planning on using the benches for some chair bombing. In the coming weeks, we’ll be setting them down on a nice piece of nature strip, some place where neighbours and passers-by can sit and shoot the breeze.

Next month’s workshop, on August 20, will be on making planter boxes from pallets. It’s filling fast, so contact the UBC if you’re keen.

I’M besotted with baking at the moment, so over the coming weeks, I’ll write a couple of posts about my sourdough and me.

Today, I’ll start – where else? – with the starter. If you’d like a soundtrack, I suggest The Loaf, by Darren Hanlon.

For those of you who haven’t come across the makings of sourdough before, the starter – otherwise known as the culture, plant or mother dough – is a kind of wild, bubbling, gurgling yeast. It’s the thing that makes the dough rise and contains the bacteria that make it sour. To my understanding of yeast, what happens is this: as the mix ferments, the yeast eats the sugars in the flour and releases carbon dioxide, which leavens the dough.

You can make your own starter in a week, by fermenting flour and water. I have a beautiful book called The Handmade Loaf, by Dan Lepard, in which he suggests adding raisins and yoghurt to the recipe.

But if you’ve got a liking for narrative – or convenience – I suggest you prevail on a friend for a portion of their culture. To keep it alive, you must feed it regularly with fresh flour and water (or you can store it for a while in the fridge or freezer and revive it later). This bakery in San Franscisco has been using the same “mother dough” since 1849.

While I was away hitch-hiking last year, my old starter died. I discovered the jar recently, toppled over under our kitchen bench. When I peered at the jar’s congealed innards, it I realised that both of us – the culture and I – were petrified.

Its death was apt. Over the last few years, I had made a number of half-hearted attempts at baking bread, but gave up, not really knowing what I was doing.

But then I fell in love with Les Bartlett’s small bakery near Maleny on the Sunshine Coast. There I met Penny, a fellow Melbournian, who was staying there to learn Les’s craft. Earlier this year I saw Penny again and she brought me a sample of his sourdough plant. For most of this year, I’ve been baking twice a week. I am only beginning to learn.

This is what my jar looked like the other day:

 

Last week, I was talking with a good friend whose grandmother died recently. He was driving to visit her one morning, when he received a call saying she’d passed away. While we talked, I began to think about my family.

Two years ago my grandparents on my mother’s side died within a week of each other. At that time I gained solace from the wisdom of another friend, Daniela from Argentina.

Daniela is the person who first showed me how to bake bread, while I stayed for weeks at her remote camping ground – Ecocamping Ñorquinco – on the edge of a lake, in a national park, in northern Patagonia. Here she is by the lake, with bread for morning tea:

 

She told me that while she did not believe in an afterlife, she knew that her relatives, generation upon generation, lived on through her and through her children: not only in their minds – for memories rarely surpass a few generations – but also in their bodies. Her ancestors lived on, physically, through her.

I find this profound; it seems both soulful and scientifically valid. I think of generations stretching back in time, each of us given our substance by those before us, even as we must make our days, minds and bodies our own.

Sourdough is like that. Whenever I open my jar of culture to begin a new batch, I call upon a living portion of the past. The mother loaf goes back to Les, and maybe beyond. Its family tree extends through all those with whom he’s shared it, and on and on, in turn.

ANDY and I ventured north on a sunny Saturday, to hold a UBC workshop at a Permablitz for the Reservoir Neighbourhood House.

We were asked to adapt our previous bathtub wormfarm design into something much lower to the ground, to fit a convenient spot near the kitchen and double as an outdoor bench. We scavenged timber from our own ramshackle stocks, including some gorgeous old hardwood floorboards that Tall English Stephen had earmarked for his own chook shed. He put on a brave face when he found them missing.

Despite the trouble we were in with a miffed Stephen, this was my new all-time favourite Urban Bush-Carpenters workshop. A large group of enthusiastic volunteers did all the work while we watched, imparted wisdom and ate cake. Many of the participants hadn’t had any experience using a saw or a drill, but with a few small pointers and much gusto, we produced a beautiful object.

It is a constant source of wonder to me that we always seem to have just the right amount and right kind of timber on hand, not more or less – but I guess that’s about making do with whatever we’ve got. 

I was so excited by the way it looked, that if it were me, I’d be inclined to keep it inside.

We’ve got our next workshop at CERES on this Saturday July 16, at 10 am. We’ll be building bench seats, like this:

If you want to take part, shoot us a message.

LAST weekend the Urban Bush-Carpenters commenced phase two of our world domination strategy: we held a free workshop at CERES on how to build planter boxes from pallets.

Half a dozen of Melbourne’s savviest citizens came along. We split into three groups. I worked with Neil and Tom (pictured) to transform these:

 

Into this:

 

And then, within a couple of hours:

Hey pesto! You could grow bunches of basil in this container (sorry about the pun). 

 As our new accomplices found out, there’s nothing tricky about the design. All you need are a couple of pallets, a saw, a hammer and some screws and nails. And a friend with whom to stand side-by-side, point and think-out-loud, while you’re figuring it all out.

Neil, Tom and Thomas (another attendee) are all part of a guerrilla community garden by the train line in Clifton Hill. They’ve promised to share their bush-carpentry skills with the neighbours (world domination begins – very slowly).

Until the end of the year, the UBC will be holding workshops at CERES on the third Saturday of every month. At the next one we’ll make bench seats – send us an email if you’d like to attend.