There is no blood on their claws, I checked. I doubt their breath smells like rat meat, either. I don’t know why I keep them around.
Actually, that was just an excuse to post. The real reason is to see how this WordPress phone app works. I am going to find out riiiiiiiiight now.
It looks like its on its way to being a fire pit, right? Well the cats seem to have a different idea. I assume you can tell what is pictured on the left. They obviously think I like them SOOOOO much that I would buy 600 pounds of concrete and mortar, 1000 pounds river rocks, work mortar until my fingers and hands were cracked and dry, and brave some of the hottest recorded days in Houston to build them a stone litter box. I bet they are bragging to the strays and gloating to the chickens about it right now.
Regardless, I finally have a fire pit. I decided I wanted one about 2.5 years ago, and I’ve been overthinking it ever since (refractory clay? foundation? rebar? will the rocks crack? how big? vents?). Since I am never going to be more jobless than I am now, I went ahead and pulled the trigger.
I decided to use regular mortar rather than fire clay because mortar is free relative to fire clay. If it doesn’t stand up to the heat, I will just patch it back together. I did decide to build a foundation, but I did not use rebar. The foundation is a ring and is about 5″ deep (though it looks much shallower in the picture to the right). It took 240 pounds of cement just for that. Do you think the cats are already plotting?
After letting the concrete set for a day, I began piling on the rocks and mortar. I am not sure I got the consistency exactly right, but it seems to be holding. I was using a trowel religiously until I discovered that I am not gifted with a trowel. I started using my bare hands after the first layer. BAD IDEA! I thought my hands were getting pruney due to the wetness of the concrete. Instead, there was some kind of chemical reaction. My skin started cracking after about a day. I did some research, and the pH level of cement is 12-13 whereas human skin is 5.5. Then I read the label. God Bless Texas, because it said that I could have gotten cancer if I was in California.
Here is the finished product, although some of the mortar is still drying. The pit itself has an ID of about 4 ft. and a height of a couple feet. I included some vent holes by mortaring in 1″ PVC pipe and pulling it out after the mortar set. In addition to ventilation, I may use one of the holes to plumb black pipe if I decide to build a propane burner for easily starting fires and/or cooking.
I want the fire to be above ground level, so I have also built a grate. This was intended to serve two purposes. It raises the fire above ground level and lets air get to the embers. I was about to finish by welding legs and a truss for support
, but I started getting nervous that the grate might not be a great idea. My concerns relate to the fire getting too much air, burning through wood too fast, not having the insulation of the ground, and losing that campfire feel. Rather than welding on legs, I am going to place it on blocks for a test run. It will become a cooking surface if I don’t like how it acts.
I’d like to close by offering my advise and ridicule if you ever want to build something like this. Notice I did not offer my help. It was much, much more of a pain than I ever imagined.
I 
haven’t posted in several days because my parents were in town. We ate a lot, laughed a lot, and picked up chickens. From top to bottom, I call them Red, Red, and Red. The gentleman at Quality Feed selected these chickens specifically for me! From observations thus far, I think he was picking out the dumb ones that more refined clientele might refuse. They did impress me by being nestled in the coop when I arrived home from dinner. They get points for that. My real disappointment is that the ETA for eggs is several months from now.
The other “farmy” issues this weekend related to tree branches and cats.
Most of the branches shown on the left came crashing down this morning. I’m surprised because they look completely healthy. Could it be due to the weight of the pecans growing on them? I find that kind of hard to believe, but it is currently my only explanation.
The cat issues had to do with the youngest two. They’ve developed new affinity for climbing UP, but they
lack any interest in climbing DOWN. This has become a daily occurrence. You have to look closely, but you can see them to the right.
I also finally started building a fire pit from river rocks. I will report back on that once I finish and know if it is a success or failure. It has been one of my worst guesstimates so far. I am 400 lbs into concrete and mortar, and it is still tiny. I don’t think I am halfway there.
Another day, and they are still busy catching nothing. They don’t even look alive in this picture.
Can you guess what these cats are doing?
NOT EARNING THEIR KEEP!
I took this picture today, and it is their typical M.O. I got them to destroy pests, but instead they lay around, eat food, and get stuck in odd places.
El Diablo is the gray tailless one. He was so named to scare away predators and rodents. It hasn’t seemed to work. The younger cats are named Double Naught and Scarface (AKA Bandit). Double Naught is an allusion to the Beverly Hillbillies in which Jethro Bodine wanted to be a Double Naught Agent (like Double Naught Seven) and have a license to kill. The other was named Bandit by the previous owner, but he has since scratched his face climbing around inside of my pool table. Hence, Scarface.
So far, El Diablo (the gray tailless one) has a meager 1 1 /8 recorded kills over the 5 months of our acquaintance. I’ve tallied this as follows:
Double Naught has yet to touch anything living, and I can’t decide if Scarface scores any point for eating the dragonfly. I am leaning towards not.
I will update as they move towards self sufficiency and providing for themselves.