I've done a fair amount of cooking on campfires in the past, when Kyle and I were very involved with the local historical re-enactment society, with smoke stinging my eyes and my hair all in the way. It's always a bit of a bother, and nothing ever seems clean. Given that we'll likely be camping for the month or two of building the little 'prototype' house, and will be inviting a lot of people to help, I wasn't particularly looking forward to the prospect of cooking for 20-30 people for any length of time. I've done it before, but it's not fun.
So I started looking for alternatives, as you do. Wood fired ovens came up over and over again, partly as they seem one of the few things that enjoy popularity with both off-grid eco-enthusiasts such as ourselves and the more 'regular' love-to-watch-Better-Homes-and-Gardens type people. Everyone seems to want one. But, again, they seemed like a fair amount of bother.
Then I found barrel ovens. No 3-4 hours of stoking the fire in advance, but similar efficiency. Seems like a no-brainer.
Kits for the metalwork can be ordered in the US through a company delightfully called Firespeaking, but even if they would ship to Australia I suspect the postage would be prohibitive, so we will need to make this ourselves. At this stage Kyle pointedly reminds me that I had said he could one day buy a welder, and perhaps that day has come. Seems like this will work out well.
In my head at least it makes good sense to begin the metal work for the barrel oven anytime from now, then begin building the brickwork as soon as we purchase land as we don't need permits for this type of thing. Old fired bricks are dirt cheap at the local tip-shop - we go every weekend and they always have stacks of them around. By the time we get around to having permits for the house and having all those people around the oven will have dried, been test-fired, and be ready to go!
So I started looking for alternatives, as you do. Wood fired ovens came up over and over again, partly as they seem one of the few things that enjoy popularity with both off-grid eco-enthusiasts such as ourselves and the more 'regular' love-to-watch-Better-Homes-and-Gardens type people. Everyone seems to want one. But, again, they seemed like a fair amount of bother.
Then I found barrel ovens. No 3-4 hours of stoking the fire in advance, but similar efficiency. Seems like a no-brainer.
Kits for the metalwork can be ordered in the US through a company delightfully called Firespeaking, but even if they would ship to Australia I suspect the postage would be prohibitive, so we will need to make this ourselves. At this stage Kyle pointedly reminds me that I had said he could one day buy a welder, and perhaps that day has come. Seems like this will work out well.
In my head at least it makes good sense to begin the metal work for the barrel oven anytime from now, then begin building the brickwork as soon as we purchase land as we don't need permits for this type of thing. Old fired bricks are dirt cheap at the local tip-shop - we go every weekend and they always have stacks of them around. By the time we get around to having permits for the house and having all those people around the oven will have dried, been test-fired, and be ready to go!
No comments:
Post a Comment