This firing took place on Thanksgiving Day last year at my brother’s place out in the country. This is a good firing to analyze because it’s reasonably well documented, and because it resulted in some very successful pots — and some very unsuccessful ones, too. (Yes, you often learn more from your failures than from your successes!)
I had heard about the use of dung (mostly cow dung) in pit firing, and wanted to try it myself. So I came to my brother’s place last July and collected some dung from his horses, Midge and Skyboy. As you can see in the photo below (figure 1) Midge was rather suspicious about why I was so interested in her, er, stuff.
While I could have dug a real pit and fired in there, I decided to bring along a small BBQ grill and a medium size BBQ smoker, and to do my firing in them instead; my rationale is as follows: if the firing is not too smoky, I can probably do the same thing in the city, too. (more…)
