Richard (Liz' dad) and Barbara (Liz' aunt) were around on Sunday afternoon, and as afternoon became evening we started talking about fires and the fireplace. Given that Liz has had a bad track record this past 3 months lighting accidental fires we haven't made a fire in the fireplace. That, and I have no idea how to do a fire.
Richard felt confident in being able to do it, so we gave it a go. It was a strange night to give it a shot, because it wasn't that cold outside. Richard and I went to the garage and got some firewood and brought it up. We had liberal amounts of newspaper to act as kindling thanks to the Stamford Times being delivered weekly.
After about 30 minutes of trying we still didn't have a solid fire going, but Richard wouldn't give up. Barbara left. People started wondering if it would happen. But it happened. The heat in the fireplace had warmed everything up and when the doors closed the fire kept going.
I took some closer shots of the fire, which was quite warm once it was going.
Eventually all the wood burned, but heat and embers remained. Someone brought up that that's the time to toast marshmallows. We only had mini marshmallows, so they had to do the job. The fireplace was still really hot so we had to wear oven mitts to heat the marshmallows. I looked at the bag, and it said that 13 mini marshmallows were equal to 1 regular marshmallow. So, that's how many I put on the skewer:
The fire was fun. I think it made all of us appreciate how hard people must have had to work back in the day to get fires started and to keep them going. Thanks to Richard for getting the fire going and keeping it going. He tended his creation diligently - constantly moving logs around... even by hand on occasion. Running water is in the kitchen.
1 comments:
Russell took really great close up shots of the fire, didn't he?
And yes, he really did cram 13 marshmallows onto that sorry excuse of a skewer. It was really not a good idea to use skewers in the fire. I think my dad singed off any hair that was on his hand. All for gooey marshmallows.
All the credit of that fire truly goes to my Dad. I have to admit, I was ready to give up after Barbara left. But my Dad wouldn't have it. He started it, and he was going to get that fire going, no matter how much newspaper it took. At one point he was blaming the wood, saying it was bad for a fire. I guess it turned out to be ok, once we closed the doors.
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