Fire Pit

Since I got my fire pit, I have completely eradicated a couple of large brush piles between my yard and the railroad tracks, and have been using it to burn glossy magazines, since they take too long to compost. A couple of days ago, almost to my delight, a medium-sized tree in the back of my yard broke off about ten feet up, falling between the fence and my planters, without hitting anything, so I have been cutting that up and burning it.

Besides my natural fondness for fire (in safe places), I am also enjoying practicing starting fires in the rain, since we're getting a lot of it, and doing so without the use of accelerants, even using a Ferro rod and flint and steel a couple of times, using one of my knives and some char cloth. I have not yet mastered the art of using a bow drill and, in fact, I cheated when we were supposed to do that in Boy Scouts; I started a fire by rubbing two sticks together, but both were sulfur-tipped and otherwise known as matches.

I think I mentioned my fire pit in the shopping thread or something, but I thought I'd start a thread on it here.

 

Here's my review of it on Amazon.com, with more photos.

 

So why did you opt for this rather that a traditional upright burn barrel?

When I was a kid (in Indiana and in Virginia) we burned our stuff. I don't really recall formal trash collection back then, nor do I recall what we did with organic stuff (it may have gone in the burn barrel with everything else.) I've thought of getting one for my current rural location (I have a few 55 gallon barrels in my shed), but would miss out on the local flavor of hauling my stuff to the local drop off centers.

I've seen fire pits for sale at various places, but never a sorta-portable one like this.

 

Millinocket doesn't allow burn barrels, so this is a barbecue. If I need to slap some hamburger on it when code enforcement comes around, I will. But I doubt they'll be coming around because they haven't been very successful in messing with me.

 

LOL.

People around here stack up their brush and other stuff to burn in the middle of their fields, with restrictions during high-wind seasons. I don't do it because I'm not comfortable with how close my surrounding woods are. And I had the volunteer fire department and Dept of Forestry out here a couple of years ago due to an accident with wood stove embers...I was not please with the [lack of] quality of their work.

 

We've had a couple of fires in town already this summer (a house and a garage lost in separate fires) due to people burning stuff so I can understand there being some restrictions on burning in a populated area, but my firepit has a cover and I make sure it's covered if I'm not out there with it, just to make sure that sparks aren't carried away in the wind.