We heat our homes with wood on our homesteads. One of the things that I have noticed with getting my own stove and with having several friends get fire places or wood stoves recently is that many people haven’t ever been taught the skill of fire starting.
So, today I’m going to go through how fire starting isn’t so complicated after all. The things you will need are:
1. fire starter such as newspapers and card board
2. small twigs
3. small and medium sized logs
4. large logs
There are more things that you can use for fire starting to heat your home with wood. I’ve listed some of the other things here.
So step one, put newspaper inside a small card board box. Then on top of the box, put several small twigs on top almost in a tepee shape as you can see in the picture.
After that light the newspaper from the front and the fire spread to the inside of the cardboard box, catching the box on fire. This then burned and caught our twigs on fire. As the twigs began to catch on fire, he then added a small very dry log to the top of the twigs.
Then he shut one door on the wood stove to create a strong draw of air onto his fire. As the log began burning merrily, he then added a medium sized log.
Our fire is now beginning to create some coals which is excellent because it will help keep the fire burning for a while. My fire can be kept going for up to three days without having to clean the fire out. I will have to remove some of the ashes over time, but the coals can stay and be reused for as many as three days.
Once the medium sized log is merrily blazing, we can now add a large log in. As that catches fire, you’ll want to bank the fire by placing several large logs in and damping down your fire once they are burning nicely.
That’s how we get our fire going on the homestead. Oh, and if types of wood and how they burn are of interest to you, you might find this article fascinating.
Until next time,
Homestead in health ya’ll!
Emily
