Fire starters

With sixteen long leaf pines, I usually have an abundance of pine cones. Somehow I missed the major dropping and didn’t get any cones collected before the holidays but today, while out watering all the fruit trees, pecans and olives, I discovered three late droppers. I collected a bucket full of opened pine cones.

I melt paraffin wax on the stove and coat the pine cones. They make excellent fire starters, especially since I don’t get the local daily paper. I put wadded up newspaper or the shredded paper from my home office shredder, a couple of pine cones, a small sliver of fat wood and then my oak logs. The fire always starts right up and pine cones generate a sustained heat to allow the logs to catch.