Dacota Fire Hole

Lately I’ve become a fan of Primitive Technology, and started watching similar channels in Youtube. And one beautiful day I suddenly felt the urge to go and spend some time in the mountains. So – in the car I went and straight to Studenets – about 30 kilometers from Plovdiv.

I had some sausages, which I wanted to roast. So – since it was really windy – it was time to test the Dakota Fire Pit into action. The basic idea is to dig a hole, in which the fire will be lit, and to create another hole, to supply the fire with oxygen.

Well, considering the tools I had was a knife, I had to improvise. So I dug a big enough hole (using a branch, and removing the dirt by hand), and then I dug a small canal, which was the oxygen supply. Then I covered part of the canal with branches, and covered the branches with dirt. Since it was really windy – I built a wall, using twigs, “hammered” into the ground and some thin branches to connect them. And then I covered the “wall” with more dirt.

Well, the end result was a bit far from the original idea, but still did the trick:

Well, all I had to do was to gather some thin branches and create skews. Unfortunately – being in a hurry, didn’t find peppers, so I used sausage and onions for the skews. A pro tip – in order for the onion not to split – create a triangle hole, wide enough for the “skew” with a knife – this way it will remain intact.

The downside of this is you need more time to prepare the fireplace. Although it has multiple advantages:

• generates enormous heat for the little firewood I gathered
• has useful walls, which can be used to place grill, or skews
• produces less smoke
• not affected by wind
• safer – it’s harder to create fores fire
• really easy to extinguish – you just return the dirt back into the hole and collapse the air hole