Rocket Stove

As part of my personal studies while working on the farm, I wanted to look into rocket stoves, which are a method for cooking more quickly, cleanly, and energy-efficiently than a simple wood fire.  After eight months at the farm, I finally got around to creating a rocket stove and testing it out.  I followed instructions that I found here.  The key to making this work, in my opinion, is having good tin snips for cutting the metal cans.  I made a first attempt at a stove with old, crappy tin snips.  It did not turn out well.  This stove you see in the pictures was the second attempt and it went great.  It requires three tin cans of different sizes, tin snips, and something for insulation (which in my case was sand).

I fed my firewood (twigs) into the top half of the can that was sticking out of the side.  Throughout the whole process of boiling water and then cooking the quinoa, I probably used a handful of tiny twigs and maybe four feet of sticks that were about a centimeter in diameter.

I had successful quinoa in about 20 minutes!  The pot was all sooty on the bottom, but if you're prepared for that, it isn't really much of an inconvenience.