Fire in a pot...plant pot

Yesterday while on Youtube (silly me I didn't book mark the page) my daughter saw a really neat "rocket stove" type idea. Someone camping found a crack in the side of a bank of clay (type soil) enough to build a small fire at the bottom and put the billy on the top to boil.

"Hey Mum why have we not started on our Rocket Stove!"

Big sigh....yer why not.

Forever....we've had an empty pot at the front door step and then one day we put the brazier in it to keep it safe. Both Dave and I looked at it and wondered if it would work just like that. I was worried that the heat might crack the pot....and also what fun would the kids get out of that with all the work already done.

So following the cob book we have here...we started out. We robbed "more of my sand pit", then some clay of the ever crumbling bank and some cow pen sawdust (well washed by many downpours of rain) and some water.

Mud pies I hear you saying...yup. It was really hard to get some good photos while trying to keep the mud in the right places and get grubby myself.

Dave walked past and said "I think it's almost 60% sand in the cob ovens"....so I went and got a little more sand.

Both kids had a wonderful time singing into the pot listening to the echo. My son was not so keen to get his hands dirty....but my daughter true to form dug straight in. They patted and shaped and grumbled at each other...knocked it down and built it back up.

To finish off with they both had a wash down under the hose...which then led them to become very cold...so to warm up we ambled up the road collecting scrap wood to burn. I was telling them the whole time that they would have to cook their own dinner ;-)

I probably didn't let them do the final stuff of cooking and fire lighting - well fire poking - my daughter did light the fire but I still need to hang back a little more.