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["WF Smith" <mogrits AT gmail.com>]

Rob- I've cooked many a hog in a concrete block "pit". You need 44 8" x 16"
concrete blocks to make a pit 32" x 48" inside. (6" block would work as
well). You need a few, maybe 10 pieces of rebar or steel pipe approximately
4' long. You need one sheet of plywood and enough chicken wire to wrap the
hog so you can flip it over.

I use a metal drum to make coals- it has a shovel sized hole cut out of the
bottom with four of those bars criss-crossing above the opening- maybe
halfway down the barrel. You burn your hardwood on top of those rebars and
banging the drum makes the coals drop down where you can shovel them out and
place them under the hog. It's really simple, really crude and very, very
good! You can figure about an hour for every 10 lbs.

Dry stack two courses of block like this:
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Then lay the remaining rebars/pipes across the blocks from left to right and
lay two more courses of block on top of the bars. You could chip the block
with a hammer to receive the bars. Wrap your pig in the wire and it will lie
on the bars 16" above the pit floor. Lay your plywood over the top and you
will have a 16" wide door in front thru which to shovel in your coals. You
will want a piece of plywood to lay against the door in case you need to
smother the flames from a grease flare-up. I get my hogs butter-flied with
the head and feet left on and cook it the first hour belly down- I find this
allows a lot of the fat to melt and drip out. Then I flip it and cook it the
rest of the time on it's back. The skin crisps up and forms a bowl that
holds all the juices. Before cooking I do nothing to the hog except rub it
down with oil and sprinkle powdered garlic liberally all over it.

Now I'm hungry.

Warren