We've created a fire table at our outdoor studio here in Tennessee. It's 8 feet wide and 4 feet deep with a 2 foot side wall on three sides. It's not pretty, but it helps make pretty food.
Last weekend my pal Jason and I conspired to craft a meal for our families over the fire and served at the old picnic table on the dining knoll. Around noon, I lit the fire. About an hour later the fire had gown into a bed of coals big enough to spread out into a 4' diameter circle. I built a rudimentary hanging apparatus using rebar, a pipe fitting, and a small-game-snare. I cinched the snare around the leg bone of a hunk of lamb and hung it to bask in 250 degree smokey heat for about five hours.
Result: Amazing.
The lamb was tender and offered a range of doneness from mid-well to mid-rare. The salmuear, slat brine I'm dosing the meat with in the photo above, transformed the meat into a lovely bit of goodness. All of this done over a live-fire, in the woods, burning hickory and oak and a dash of love.