In the Town of Lincoln (where we live), one can acquire the privilege of fire in one’s yard for the paltry sum of $10. Last week, I went down to town hall and asked about it. There isn’t a test or anything (apart from being able to write one’s name and address). One can just go and fill out a form, pay $10 and have the ability to set things on fire. What an age of marvels.
We were able to put it to good use this evening. We had several of the youngish people from church over after service for a barbecue (twice-dropped sausages are twice as tasty as ones that have never hit the concrete, apparently) and a camp fire.
We went to the Superstore this afternoon and purchased a ‘moon and stars’ fire pit. It is about 60 cm in diameter and has (as advertised) punchouts of moons and stars all around it. I spent part of today splitting the branches of the pine tree down to manageable sizes and we burned quite a lot of it along with most of the box in which the fire pit came. We toasted marshmallows and made S’mores. The best way we’ve found to make them is using chocolate digestive cookies (they are digestive cookies that have chocolate on one side, if you haven’t seen them). The chocolate has a really low melting point and won’t fall off the cookie as the classic Jersey Milk chunks are wont to do. We have a couple of telescoping toasting forks that have a sort of rotating bit that are super useful for such things. I think probably the onus of having to mow the lawn is worth being able to burn stuff on top of it. A pretty fair trade.