Harper's Outdoor Book for Boys

by Joseph H. Adams

This stove can be made either round or square, and if bricks are available for use they will be better than stones as the joints are closer and they are not so ungainly to handle. Over the stove a ridge-pole or bar should be supported on a yoked stick at one end and a twin-stick tripod at the other. The yoked or crotched stick is embedded in the ground, or it can be the sawed-off stump of a small tree. The lower ends of the twin sticks should be let into the ground for a foot or eighteen inches, so that the ridge-bar can be removed without its supports falling over.

Always build a fire or a stove in the shade, for it will not burn so well if the sun plays on it. In rainy weather a canopy over this stone stove will keep it dry and cause it to burn better than if exposed to the elements.

Here are some other ideas for camp-fires proper. Let us suppose that the party is provided with the necessary utensils for camp-cooking—a camp-kettle, coffee-pot, frying-pan, saucepan, and some sort of baking-pan. These should prove sufficient, unless the party intends having quite elaborate menus. If it is intended to remain at the camp only while cooking one or two meals, make your fire in this manner: Cut two green poles about five or six inches thick and about two feet long. In these cut notches about a foot apart. Level the ground where you intend to build your fire, and lay these poles down with the notches up and about three feet apart. Now cut two or three poles about four feet long and lay them in these notches. Gather a good supply of dry wood, grass, bark, or chips, and make your fire on the ground between the poles. The air will circulate under and through the fire, and the poles will prove just right to set your cooking-utensils on. Do not pile on wood by the armful. Add a little at a time, and you will find you can cook rapidly and well, and not burn your face and hands while attending to your cooking.

If it is intended to remain several meals at the camp it will pay to put up a crane. This is built in this manner: Cut two green posts two or more inches thick and three feet long, having forks at one end. Drive these into the ground at each end of your fire. Cut another green pole the same diameter and long enough to reach between the forks. Flatten the ends so that they will set snug in the forks.

The poles should be driven into the ground so that when the bail of the kettle is slipped on the crane the bottom of the kettle will just clear the fire.

If the camp is to be of a permanent nature, or it is expected to remain there for some days or weeks, it will be well to arrange for a better kitchen that will not be affected by the winds, the bête noire of camp-cooking. Dig a trench (cutting the sides square) as long as the distance between your uprights, and about eighteen inches wide and a foot deep. Make your fire in this hole, on the ground, and you will find that the wind will not worry you one-half as much as before (Fig. 33). If you wish to take the trouble, and the material is handy, the plan in Fig. 35 is a most excellent one to follow. Wall up the sides of the trench with brick, add a little chimney at one end, and get several iron “S” hooks from which to suspend your kettles. This will save the lifting of the crane every time you wish to handle the kettles suspended over the fire. By this method you will economize on fuel and save heat.

The plan used in the army for camp-cooking and described below is the best for all-around work. To make this kitchen takes more time and a little more labor, but in the end the laborers will be well paid for their work. It is particularly adapted for clayey soil. Dig a hole about three feet square and two feet in depth, generally in the slope of a hill. On one side run a shaft laterally, about one foot square and six feet in length, and one foot from the surface of the ground. At the extreme end sink a shaft vertically and form a chimney, and at equidistances pierce holes of sufficient diameter to prevent the kettles from slipping through. By this mode the kettles can be placed over the fire to boil, or on the side to simmer, with less difficulty than by any other means. Fig. 36 A and B.

I want to tell the young camper how to bake his own bread in camp, so if he camps far from a store or house where he can buy his bread he will not have to eat crackers, or those indigestion-producers, flapjacks, that the youthful camper knows how to make, or thinks he does. I have eaten many a one in my young days before putting on the “army blue,” but their weight in gold would not induce me to eat some that I swallowed as a boy and thought “fine.” We will assume that before going into camp your dear mother has taught you how to mix a batch of dough or a pan of biscuit. We will now make an oven in which to bake the bread or biscuit. A bank from four to six feet is the best for the purpose. Dig down the bank to a vertical face, and at the base excavate a hole, say three to four feet horizontally, care being taken to keep the entrance as small as possible. Hollow out the sides of the excavation and arch the roof, till the floor of the oven is about two feet wide and the arch about sixteen inches at the centre. Fig. 37 A and B.