Take Two Pine Cones and Call Me in the Morning

pinecones800

Our prescription for an easy fire is this: just toss a couple of cones under the kindling. Then, if you must, use a match. But if you have time, wait for the resin to ignite from last night’s coals.

It has been a good year for the pines on Goose Creek. Not only have they produced a copious supply of cones (and the released seeds our chickens forage for under them) but good for us–the woody “leaves” of the cone this year are heavy with highly-flammable resin.

We have, next to the kindling basket beside the big woodstove in the front room, another, heaped high with cones arranged in a towering spiral, a cone itself, ready for all the fires to come.

Winter is soon upon us in full force. We are ready.

 

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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