Build and Cook with a Dakota Fire Hole - PEP BB rocket.sand.dakota

To get certified for this Badge Bit you must provide pics or video (<2 min) of the following:
 - The spot where the Dakota fire hole will be dug
 - Building the Dakota fire hole
 - Starting materials before fire with cold Dakota fire hole
 - Fire started
 - Additional wood added
 - Food cooking
      - If using a pan or pot, show it resting on something to keep from plugging the exhaust of the system

I dug the holes, and then kept them covered from rain until I was ready to try it.
Luckily, I get a lot of branches/sticks/etc. on my urban yard so I collected a bin and put them in my greenhouse to dry out more (we were expecting rain).
I also wrapped up a few handfuls of dried grasses from around the garden.  
Plus a bit of oily paper towel from doing the "clean an oily plate" BB.

Fired up my Dakota stove today and cooked some hot dogs using an old baking rack I had lying around and hadn't used in ages :)  They turned out perfect!

I've been wanting to try this way of outdoor cooking for a little bit. I am really happy with how it worked! I started the air hole facing the wind, but it changed direction half way through. It still worked, but was a little slower to start.

I cooked some shredded veggies over this Dakota stove. I was surprised by the speed of the cooking. Turned out great!

To get certified for this Badge Bit you must provide pics or video (<2 min) of the following:
- The spot where the Dakota fire hole will be dug
- Building the Dakota fire hole
- Starting materials before fire with cold Dakota fire hole
- Fire started
- Additional wood added
- Food cooking
     - If using a pan or pot, show it resting on something to keep from plugging the exhaust of the system

Sadly, I've forgotten how to embed photos into my text. I guess it's been too long since my last BB submission but I'm back at it! The photos should be in order. I'd be grateful if someone could shoot me a link for how to embed photos, I tried to search for it but must not have used the right search terms.

Building a dakota stove was a fun project I've been wanting to do for a while to use the forged tripod that my husband made. I picked an area that I was fairly certain wouldn't have roots. This ended up being a two day project because by the time I finished digging, the wind had picked up  so I tried to implement the flagstone, seen in photos after #5, to act as a wind barrier but decided to hold off until the following day to start the fire. The wild rice and lentil soup turned out better than I thought. The cook time for the wild rice required me to regularly feed the fire for at least an hour. I wish I had seasoned firewood but had to use whatever I could find on the ground, it wasn't ideal. I'd like to season firewood to be more prepared in the future. I raised and lowered the pot a few times during the hour based on how smokey it was or if the heat varied -- it was awesome to have the tripod for this! I was pretty happy that there wasn't a double chimney effect. I sealed the holes with flagstone so that I can use it again and again!

Here is my stealth cooking stove. I used the fox stove described in the 6 quick stick tricks PDF I think I got from the dailyish. They say the Dakota stove is a type of stealth stove, I hope these all fall into the same category here, mine just about matches the first diagram in this thread. My design has more rocket j-tube aspects that the videos in this thread I think, but all the same elements. The 'feed tube' hole is just under 4 feet long, the 'riser' is just under 3 feet deep.

The "foxhole" picture shows the old fox hole next to my working area that was the inspiration. There was another warren like hole nearby that was deep enough I probably could have just dug down and used that, but i've seen some hare in the vicinity and am kind of hoping they are planning to upgrade it to a wofati soon.

I cooked up a ham steak from a nearby farm. I started the fire with newspaper, a paper bag, and old pine twigs stored in a barrel. I burned lath salvaged from a paper mill's burn pile in the same area. I started with a full ring of rocks around the exhaust hole, but ended up removing every other one to improve airflow.

[I had to edit some of the photos to rotate them, but this put them out of order, doesn't seem like I can arrange that myself...?]