It’s dead simple. I use the big hackberry stumps (from a free mulch dump) to block the north wind and act as a heat shield to potted plants above a swale. This is a smaller batch since it was dark and raining last night (always try to make batches before the rain comes). The pit probably could have steeper sloping on the walls but this works fine for me and my kids who love starting the burn and quenching with their squirt guns lol.

Pic 2. The pile of charred bigger logs that don’t fully burn are reused to fill areas where flames are highest and to minimize oxygen for reducing ash in the next batch.

I quench with 50-100 gallons of rainwater that has kelp, molasses and minerals added to it. Generally I start around the edges wherever ash is starting to show, and let the bigger stuff in the middle keep burning.

Pic 3. The brush pile makes a 30’ ring around the bee hives so the bees are sheltered and have to fly up to get out (for the kids). The pile can get about 8’ high and 8’ wide at the peak of pruning season. I’ve already burned about 10 batches and have 4-5 more to go for a fresh start to the year. The leaves left underneath catch any runoff from properties uphill of us

Then the chickens eat it and give us black butt nuggets in their coop and run. We also add our household liquid compost (urine, meat pack blood, cooking fat residue, etc) to the pots of char that entices the chickens even more and adds nutrient for the microbes and eventually the garden.

The char helps with their feed absorption and lowers the amount they need to eat and it helps them with any detox.

Hope that helps! It’s pretty much free and anyone can do something similar