DIRT

we have some.

This, my friends, is not poop.

I know it kind of looks like it. The whole time I was wrapping it in plastic, I was thinking about how it looks a lot like the presents Ollie leaves in the yard.

But I can assure you, it’s not poop¹.

What it IS….is dirt.

Clay, to be specific. Which is just dirt with a superiority complex².

It’s still a little too wet to be workable and I’ll need to let it dry out a little before I can be sure, but as of this morning, I could do the little test that wild clay potters do to see how elastic their finds are: roll a thick-ish worm of the clay, wrap it around your index finger. If it cracks a lot, it’s probably not so good for making stuff. If it conforms and stretches and retains its worminess, then you’ve got yourself some workable clay.

Mine wrapped like a charm. I’m so chuffed I can hardly stand it.

I can see why people prefer to just buy their clay, though.

I had to drive about 20 minutes outside of town, to a little byway off the highway near Stella, WA to find it. We live in an area where a large portion of our dirt is made of loam, which is abjectly horrible for pottery clay gathering. It’s what makes our dirt so awesome in all the rain, because it drains super easily without turning into a giant mudpit made of flooding and tears, but it also means you’d need a LOT of dirt to get even a handful of workable clay. It exists, but in teeny tiny amounts compared to other places.

And you can kind of tell which dirt has a high clay content because there’s a particular clumpy kind of drying pattern it has. Like elephant skin, kind of. Only made of dirt³.

A couple weeks ago, after discovering first-hand how loam sucks for wild clay gathering, I went on a Google safari, using street view to look at ALL the road cuts and embankments around town, and found just this ONE that looked promising.

And it worked! I took a test in a gallon-sized baggie and ended up with probably two pounds of workable clay⁴. I kind of wish it had kept the reddish yellow color of the embankment itself, but I’ll take poop-colored clay if it’s actual, y’know, clay.

The process is easy, but messy and kind of long.

It involves two buckets, a hose, a cheap strainer, and a pillowcase you don’t mind ruining entirely. It’s not a clean process, as you’d imagine. There is mud involved.

But but but….clay at the end. CLAY. I MADE CLAY. FROM DIRT.

I’ll stop nerding at you now. I just had to share my abject glee.

And because you’ve been patiently indulging my nerditude, here’s a picture of Porkchop for your trouble:

He’s trying to figure out why I get to bring mud in the house, but when he does it, he has to have a bath.

Life is so unfair⁵.

1. I’m also appalled at the number of times I used “poop” in one paragraph. (sigh)

2. Look at me, it says. I make things that last for CENTURIES, it says.

3. As dirt usually is, natch.

4. Possibly a little less than 2lbs, since it’s still really wet and water is heavy. But a good amount, regardless.

5. note: after this photo was taken, the good boi did get a fairly huge treat bone, which seems to have taken some of the sting out of the injustice.