Fatwood

 It's January...almost February.  It's supposed to be cold.  However, here in the sunny south, "cold" is relative.  We have been enjoying weather in the upper 60's for the past few days.  So when the temperature took a dip this morning, it was a surprise.  It was 48 degrees this morning...springtime for my Ohio relatives...but with the wind blowing 20 mph, this transplant found it hard to get warm!  I was able to leave work a little early and decided that the thermostat had fallen into the "fire-in-the-fireplace" zone.  The torrential rain over the past few days had soaked my green firewood, so I knew that I would need a very hot fire to get things started.  The answer...fatwood!  If you haven't grown up in the south or at least lived there a long time, you are probably wondering what I am talking about.  It goes by many different names - fatwood, fat lighter, lighter wood, rich lighter, pine knot, lighter knot, heart pine, and lighter'd are a few more names for this magical substance.  It comes from wood that is left in the ground after a tree has fallen or has been cut.  The resin-impregnated heartwood becomes hard and rot-resistant over time.  Other parts of the wood, such as the joints where limbs intersect the trunk, can also turn into fatwood.  Most pine trees can produce fatwood, but in the southeastern United States the wood is commonly associated with the longleaf yellow pine.  It's easy to spot because the wood becomes very hard and turns translucent because of the resin or "pine tar".  It also has the unmistakable fragrance of the inside of a cedar chest!  The reason it is so valuable (just try purchasing it online from Orvis or L. L. Bean) is because you can start a fire from the greenest, wettest wood with just a few small sticks of this stuff.  It is highly flammable...easy to light with one match.  If you want to get technical about it, just look at what Wikipedia says about it:

Coniferous tree sap is a viscous liquid, that contains terpene, a volatile hydrocarbon. Over time the evaporation of the terpene changes the state of the sap; it slowly gets thicker until it hardens into resin. New fatwood leaks the sticky sap, while in aged fatwood the sap has hardened and is no longer sticky. At every stage of the aging process, fatwood will burn readily.

Want to know how "volatile" it is?  Old-timers used to grind up fatwood and make gunpowder out of it.  Well, for my purposes of starting a fire with wet wood, it works just fine!  There was only one problem this afternoon.  I was out of small pieces of fatwood.  When Steve was living, he knew lots of farmers that were clearing land.  Most would run up on two or three lighter'd stumps while clearing a field.  Steve was always glad to take these stumps off of their hands.  He had a large pile next to his shop in our yard.  He had to "man handle" the large pieces when they came from the field to get them into manageable pieces.  He would sit down at the shop with a hatchet, a 5-gallon plastic bucket, a pair of work gloves and an old stump/chopping block.  He would chip away at the large pieces to get "kindling" sized pieces.  You don't need big pieces for several reasons, the most important being you don't want your chimney to get coated with oily soot.  I was the "chaser" - chasing down every valuable splinter that flew off the chopping block as Steve whaled away and depositing it in the plastic bucket.  Steve kept his "stash" behind the workbench and would present his friends with a small bundle of the fragrant wood for their birthday or Christmas.  Boy, was that a huge digression!  Back to today.  I had some large pieces left down by the shop, so I gathered my tools and whaled away.  Before too long, I had a nice bundle to put in the coal hod on the hearth.  The extra benefit to this wood is that you don't need air freshener when you bring it in the house.  The smell permeates the whole house in a jiffy.  I had a great time doing this little chore and more than once I shed a tear as I remembered the wonderful times that Steve & I had "down at the shop".  But I wouldn't trade this experience or the memories for anything!  And for those of you who have no idea what fatwood looks like...

 And the result of using this miraculous substance...

 

As a friend of mine used to say...I'm toasty warm and deliciously wonderful.  Good night, all!