Oh baby, lite my fire...

Yep, gets your attention doesn't it. Its not that fire I'm writing about, its a real wood smoking wood burning fire in my fireplace.


Most east Texans practice this well know little secret when building fires...use the east Texas pine knot. Have you ever used a piece of pine knot to start a fire? If not, you are in for a treat, just don't catch the chimney on fire. You can buy "flat wood" from places like L. L. Bean for some outrageous price or you can do what we east Texans do and go for a nice peaceful walk in the woods and gather it on your own. I scavenge pine knots two different ways. First, find a pine tree that a wind storm blew over say sometime last year. That way it won't still be green or old enough that the termites have eaten away the best parts. Side note...I once had a neighbor in the country tell me, "if you lay a board down while you go eat lunch, the dang termites will invade it and you'll have to cut another one". But then again, thats another story, back to the pine knots. Second choice is to find a stump where a pine once stood. Maybe a stump left during logging, that would be the preferred one. Then you just take your saw and cut it off near the ground, hopefully this will leave you with a 6-8 inch log. Perfect. When you get through strolling around in the woods taking in God's handy work, go on back to the house and I use a double bit axe to split off little "sticks" from the log. You want to get the heart of the log. That's the center that still has lots of pine sap in it. It may even still be a little sticky, thats okay. You just want that good golden color and boy does it smell good too. You want them to be about the size of my index finger, so the next time we shake hands be sure an check out my fingers.

Now comes the fire building part. Get you one or maybe two of these sticks and place them on the grate in your fireplace. I usually add a few pieces of other kindling and then some nicely seasoned firewood. My choice is red oak. Strike you a match and not like we use to see in the movies on the butt of your jeans, strike it on the striker part of the matchbox please. Lite those little pieces of pine knots and stand back to admire your fire building skills. Once those knots get burning you'll get a roar going up the chimney and thats why you can't use too many or you'll burn the house down. And I don't need anybody blaming me for a house fire.

So now you know about pine knots. If you are ever near the country place and I still live here (on and off), drop in and we'll go pine knot looking. A word of caution however, if you go walking through the country place with me you may start negotiating to buy it before we get back to the house and get a fire built.

Blessings to all....