We Never Got Around to Getting a Gas Jet

One of the things that really helped us cope with the cold weather was our fireplace.  We stayed by our fire and set our thermostats to 66 degrees at the warmest.  The hurricanes gave us plenty of firewood and we burned a lot of it. In the days preceding the winter storm, we got lots of rain.  We brought the firewood under the patio and it dried out so that we could burn it.  The chickens were thankful that we picked up the wood and used the opportunity to scratch around for bugs and worms from where we had removed the wood.

When we built the house twenty years ago, we added an opening space for a pipe in the brick fireplace to run a natural gas line to help start firewood in the fireplace.  Our house, however, ended up being all electric.  I've tossed around the idea of adding natural gas or propane, but we've gotten around to it.  Part of the reason is that we really don't need natural gas or propane to start firewood.  We do it with lighter pine.  we have a stash of lighter pine that we have found and saved over the years.

In the photo below, you can see one of many lighter pine logs we have.  It is the one standing up vertically.  All we have to do to make kindling is to get the axe and slice slivers of kindling off the fat pine log.

I began to chop slices off the log and it opens up the resin drenched wood, full of sap.  It smells like a bottle of Pine-Sol.  The oil from the pine log burns easily, flames up, and quickly starts the other wood to begin burning.

I wish that this was a scratch and sniff photo so you could enjoy the scent!

It doesn't take removing a lot off of the log to make enough kindling to start fires for a week.  Where the log was dull and grey, once you open it up, the grains are red, yellow, and amber.

I fill a 5 gallon bucket with kindling and walk back toward the house and out of the mud and the muck.

It just took a little work with the axe in order to gather plenty of firestarters.

I generally take three pieces of kindling and put them on the bottom of the grate and then cover with five or six pieces of firewood.  I crumple a few pieces of newspaper under the kindling and scratch a match.  In no time, the newspaper has blazed up, caught the kindling on fire and before you know it, the rest of the firewood is ablaze.

The resulting fire is nice and warm and the heat was much-welcomed during the cold snap.