Kindling Kollection

On Saturday, I shared about filling our shed with large pieces of wood to dry for the upcoming winter months. In addition to large pieces of wood, kindling is an important part of fire starting. We could split wood for kindling, but plenty of small pieces float in for easy retrieval.

In the fall, we store tubs of dry kindling in our floating wood shed. We bring the wood in as needed to replenish the tub next to the wood stove. We learned long ago not to bring the full tubs indoors. We transfer the wood by hand so that mice that might be nesting in the bottom don't take up residence in our cabin.

Just as our firewood needs to be replenished throughout the winter, so does our kindling. First we collect it in buckets from around the cabin's float. Next, the wet wood is dumped into our repurposed dinghy. It many not be able to float any longer, but it's leaky bottom makes it a perfect container for drying kindling.

Next, partially dry wood from the dinghy is transferred to tubs stored under the porch roof. On relatively warm, sunny days I dump the wood from the tubs onto the cabin deck and spread it out for faster drying. I call this "cooking wood." I rotate the wood from top to bottom several times and in about a month it is ready to go into our burning rotation. -- Margy