Burn, Baby, Burn!

Using a magnesium fire starter I picked up at Harbor Freight Tools, I started a fire in my fireplace this evening. It's snowing and raining outside so it was a good time to practice this skill once again.

Typically when I've started fires I've fed a ton of newspaper into the grate trying to get the kindling sitting on the andirons lit before adding logs. The newspaper naturally creates a lot of ash. However, since beginning to learn prepping skills, I've begun practicing using my magnesium fire starter figuring it's best to learn now when all is good before having to light a fire when the SHTF.

And by doing so I end up using much less fuel to get my fires started. Thus far I've used several different methods of getting the fire going: using a cotton ball that the magnesium filings have been scraped onto and a small (very small) pile of shredded newspaper. I have a number of small twigs ready to put onto the fire and slowly build them up until I start putting larger twigs on the andirons and they catch. Last the seasoned wood goes on.

And voila! I get a fire like that pictured. As I've used this method for fire starting many times now, it's time to try a new method so that I can build up a repertoire of fire starting skills.

And I've cleaned out a few more of my food storage buckets and tomorrow I plan to seek out some storage bags to start putting away the food.