Casa de Campo, Chile

Oil painting by Clina Polloni - 24”x30” - This painting is available, call 919.841.3132

Adobe is mud brick, made with mud and straw. A pit is dug, and into the pit goes the dirt, together with water, churned into a thick mud. Then straw is added, and stomping mixed the straw into the mud. A mold, usually made of wood, is the basis for making adobe bricks. The mold is packed firmly with the wet adobe mix, then removed. The bricks are dry often for several days, in a shaded area if possible. If they dried in the direct sun they would often split or crack. Once the bricks are dry, construction began. On the outside, the house is usually coated with a thin wash of the same clay the adobe was made from, and when that dried it is whitewashed with cal. Adobe houses, with their very thick walls and whitewashed exteriors, are cool in the summer. The roof is made with "Tejas", molded clay, supported with wood, carved from the local trees.

Casa de Campo, oil painting by Clina Polloni. This is a painting of an adobe house in the central region of Chile.

I had a farm in the beautiful Valley of Rabones, in the central region of Chile, is called “Region del Maule”. This farm had a few adobe homes more than a 100 years old, so we started restoring this beautiful structures. Walls of about one meter wide, framed with hard wood carved from old trees almost as wide as the walls. It must be fascinating the history that this walls could tell about the people that once lived there, but it was the years 1988 to 1998, our time to live in this beautiful house, to enjoyed the winters in the warm adobe kitchen, eating the traditional Chilean food cooked by the local people, or dreaming of the summer days, when the family and friends will come to visit the farm, long horse rides, nights in the fire telling old stories, swimming in the "Putagan" river or just being together.