Making a Firepit at Cozy Bones Farm - Our Social Centerpiece

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One of the first projects at Cozy Bones Farm was our firepit and outside sitting area. We envisioned a space where people could gather in a circle and enjoy the outdoors together. As you can see in the picture above we started in a space that was semi run down and not taken care of. I envisioned a circular garden bed around the firepit where we could grow veggies used daily for lunch and dinner. I spent a day moving around the bricks from the old beds that I had made years ago and measured everything out with a string from the center of the circle. In the picture below you can see Ryan karate chopping down an old post in order to open up that area. He spent a good 10 minutes kicking the post out of the concrete base that it had originally been set in and had a blast doing it!

Sita and I transplanted a lot of raspberries from the old bed and moved the top compost layer over to the newly formed circular garden beds. We then brought down huge cedar logs from an old tree that had fallen down and my father had cut up. These were to be our sitting stumps. This was after a whole ordeal of me wanting to use old tires as the seating and fill the center of the tires with soil to grow veggies in them, going to pick up 12 old tires for free from a local tire shop, and then having to bring them back after my father put his foot down and pointed out that the tires would leach chemicals into the soil that wouldn't be great for veggies to grow in. Though I was upset about having to bring them back, I admit that I love the cedar logs and they flow well with the space.

Ryan and I then spent a day bringing down wood chips to cover all of the paths and walked-upon areas. We experienced a couple of days of rain before bringing down the wood chips and the paths were super muddy and impossible to work on. We already had a big pile of woodchips from a fallen down tree that we utilized.

For the fire pit area, we envisioned having a stone ground. I wanted to use up a pile of grey and pink stones that my father's friend gave him as leftovers from a pool remodeling project. Ryan and I went up to the pile and selected the stones that were about the same thickness level and wheelbarrowed them down. We then spent two days making a large mosaic. We did not have a design in mind, rather we were going for "order in chaos" and just fit stones where they seemed best. It was surprisingly a lot of work to find and fit all of the stones together.

We finished up and hosed down our beautiful creation!

I was then looking around the property for something to use for the fireplace. We try and use almost all recycled goods at Cozy Bones. The great thing about my father is he loved to accumulate odds and ends, so whenever I need something I usually just walk around the land and find it. This case was no different, I was walking around and stumbled upon a large metal bowl, our future fireplace! It is pictured on Ryan's head, but did not remain there ;-) I wanted some solar powered lights for the gathering area, and knew I couldn't find those recycled so I bit the bullet and bought them new. Ryan and Isaac also spent a day clearing up around the space and moving unneeded things to our "bone yards".

We had our first fire during the first week of November, and invited friends over for dinner. It was a blazing fire that kept us and our feet warm all night long. The fire also heated up the stones to a cozy temperature, so we switched between sitting on the cedar logs and sitting right on the ground. It has been too cold to plant any new seedlings in the circular gardens, but come early spring the area will be full of delicious greens!