That’s Hot: A Pizza Oven Love Story
A community farm’s wood-fired adobe pizza oven is given a second chance.
The McAteer campus shared by Asawa SOTA and The Academy has hosted an active community farm for nearly two decades. With crops, fruit trees, and native plants along with chickens, bees, and a wood-fired adobe pizza oven, the farm has been a gathering place to work, learn, and enjoy nature’s bounty.
When the farm was locked down during the pandemic, the chickens were relocated, the plants were forced to fend for themselves, and the oven’s mud bricks began their journey back to Mother Earth.
When the farm was reopened, FOSOTA—with an eye towards kicking off new programming in farm-to-fork culinary arts—provided a little love in the form of oven-rebuilding funds (made possible by a grant to FOSOTA from the civic organization SHARP).
The restored oven’s inaugural lighting (pictured above) took place at the culmination of a capstone project by Asawa SOTA senior Hero Freedom (Vocal 2023). Centering her project on teaching fledgling adults how to make nutritious food on a budget, Hero was inspired by household memories of slogans from a 1917 US Food Administration poster that still resonate today:
Buy it with thought
Cook it with care
Use less wheat and meat
Buy local foods
Serve just enough
Use what is left
What a warm ending, and a bright beginning!
