Digging the pit

We dug the pit on Friday, 29 April, and by we I mean the crack team of experts that I assembled...

...otherwise known as my very best friends in all the world, Jamie, Kai, Jade, Paul, Robbie, Jenny, Kyle, Jimmy, and Anthony, named here because I wish to thank them from the bottom of my heart for their very hard work which I could not possibly have accomplished solo. They brought pickaxes and shovels and Jamie brought two massive bins of newspaper as he had been instructed, more on that later. They went straight to the site which I'd laid out for the pit and laid right into it. The ground was relatively soft because of all the rain we've been having but that doesn't make the swinging of pickaxes less impressive, as my soil is one part tree root, one part shale and one part pure clay - about the worst imaginable ground, but they made it work.

Here's the beginning: 

As I say, there was much swinging of pickaxes. This is Robbie who said he found it to be an excellent stress reliever. 

They got the necessary energy from the seven large pizzas handcrafted by my father.

 
More digging. It went really remarkably fast. The pit was dig in a bit over half an hour. It's about three and a half by two feet and a bit over two deep. (I am horrible at judging dimension but that's what it looks like to me.)

Then we tamped down the bottom by jumping in it, and the walls by hitting them with rocks.

We built a raised earthen ridge around the edge and covered that with stones because Paul thought it would look pretty. I'm pretty sure it's functional as well though. I was going to fire the pieces that night but I was concerned that the earth was wet and the fire might not reach optimal temperatures, so we had just a regular bonfire, to dry out the earth and because hey, a bonfire. I had the honor of lighting it.

And it blazed merrily.