Community Oven Build

Dave, here:

Thanks to Jen Burton and Mark Woodward for coming to Jericho and sharing their story of organizing, planning and building a community oven in Johnson, VT. The oven has been up and running since last fall and has been a fun and tasty way to bring families and community together. Jen explained: “The oven is intended to provide a gathering place for community baking (bring your own items to bake), community pizza nights, private functions, and other public uses. This year, the oven was used to make 35 pizzas for the Town Meeting Day potluck.”

Jen continued, saying this was a yearlong project that she championed. She organized the effort to plan, found funding, worked with town officials and brought the project to the building point. Some of the fine details included: getting letters of support from town agencies, deriving the plans for the oven and roof structure, confirming there would be insurance coverage and writing several grants for funding.

Once the organization was completed, Mark took the lead to see that the construction of the oven was orchestrated. He worked with many local volunteers, including Jen, to erect the shelter, then assisted with the building of the stove with the hired stone mason. The rocks were sourced locally from a rock pit nearby. The construction project took most of the fall to complete. Lining up volunteers for multiple weekends and getting the stone mason on-site to work around his primary work hours made the timing a challenge.
​
Take a look at their Facebook page (Johnson Community Wood Fired Oven) that includes pictures of all the construction phases. Everyone is welcome to use the wood fired oven in Johnson: you have to fill out a facilities use form from the Johnson Town offices. Since the oven can get to hundreds of degrees, you will have to read the use policies that include how to be safe while using the oven.

Jen and Mark shared many stories about their project, and felt that all the sweat equity that they put into the project was worth it. They also pointed out there were no tax payer dollars used in the building of the oven, quite a big grassroots effort. The big test will be the first summer months, which are coming up, with the oven in operation. They are hopeful, since they built it, people will come and use it!

Mark and Jen will announce future “oven” events and let Transition Town Jericho know. TTJ will forward the notifications to folks on its email list so they can join in.