Alas, winter has arrived ladies and gents. Even though there is no snow in the “cities” currently, our last trip to Rustic Pines proved that the winter is in full force on the North Shore. The white-covered scenery was beyond stunning and serene. Although my sweet hubby was not successful in his first deer hunting venture on our land, we enjoyed the trip immensely nonetheless. Having a place off-grid poses a few issues during the winter months. Since we are located inside Superior National Forest, our place is located off of a State Forest Road that is not maintained in the winter months. The problem this poses during winter is it is difficult to access at the moment, but not impossible. While we have an eventual goal to make it readily accessible all year long, currently it can be taxing to drive down to our cabin. We have long-term plans in place for Rustic Pines, and one of them is to eventually live there full-time.
Every trip we make to Rustic Pines results in bringing home a bag of garbage from our stay. We dispose of it in our garbage can at our current home and forget about it. But, if our eventual goal is to live there full-time, what are we going to do with our garbage long-term?
When I am down in the “cities”, I spend quite a bit of time researching, learning, and attaining new skills that will benefit us. While I am not the type of girl who is over the top about being green or a naturalist, using the homesteading skills I am learning, WILL benefit the preservation of Rustic Pines and Help achieve our goals. One such goal, is keeping our land as natural as possible. We are constantly discussing ways to maintain our land’s natural beauty, and clean up the garbage we keep digging up (it’s EVERYWHERE). I am constantly researching different ways to use what is available to us, to better our lives in the “cities” as well as at Rustic Pines.
One evening after work, I realized that I hadn’t checked the mail in quite awhile. As I donned my work boots (okay, they are my hubby’s boots, but I wear them constantly, therefore they are essentially mine, he, he) and trudged out to the mailbox, I opened the door that revealed a jam-packed box full of…well, crap! Leafing through the nightmare-ish pile, there were only a few items that had any type of meaningful use for me (A.K.A Bills…fun!). Instead, it was filled with an incredible amount of junk mail. What a waste of time and resources! As I leafed through the never ending pile, I began to dread that it was going to fill our garbage can inside the house, and I’d have to once again slip on the boots and make another trip to the garbage can outside. I thought to myself “I’ve got to be able to do something with this pile of junk” and promptly sat down to begin researching on the internet.
After a quick search, I stumbled on the perfect solution, fire starters! Earlier this year, I began making fire starters out of our saved drier lint, leftover candle wax and egg cartons. They work like a charm when we are starting our fires, both inside the cabin as well as in the bonfire pit. But, what if I can make a second type of fire starter with alternate materials that we obtain for free? As soon as I stumbled upon this idea, my next homesteading project was born! I was so excited about trying this, I immediately reached out to my sweet hubby to share the idea with him. We immediately began exchanging ideas back and forth, until we had a plan in place to develop it into fruition together.
How did we make them?
Materials:
5 Gallon Bucket (from your local hardware store)
Junk mail (no shiny stuff, and plastic windows removed)
Leftover cardboard boxes (again, no shiny stuff)
Newspapers (see a theme yet, no shiny stuff)
Water
Hand-Press (made with materials my hubby had on hand)
Drill with a paint stirrer (I do love playing with my hubby’s tools)
So, to make the fire starters, I took all all of the junk mail we had accumulated, a few cardboard boxes, and some newspapers and I tore them up into smaller pieces. 
I placed the mess into a 5 gallon bucket, and added enough water to cover the top of everything. Then I let it sit inside the warm house for 3-4 days (okay, it may have been five days, sometimes life gets in the way). Every once in awhile, I mixed up the mushy pile with my hands, to ensure the water was completely saturating the mix. It basically makes a paper mache mixture of sloppy goop.
After the mixture was completely saturated, we used a drill with a paint stirrer attachment to chop up the mush into very small pieces.
Next? We needed to figure out a way to compress the chopped-up mixture into smaller bricks or pucks that we could burn in the fire. My talented hubby came up with an awesome idea on how to build a press with materials he had on hand, so he quickly went to work while the papers were soaking. I’ll let him tell you how he built the press in a separate blog, it was pretty cool to watch it come to life under his capable hands.
Once the mixture was ready to go, and the press was installed and ready for use, we set out together to see if we could make a paper brick or puck. Donning vinyl gloves, scoop up the mix and place it into whatever you would like to use to compress the mix. If you don’t have the time or resources to make a press, you can use your muscles and squeeze as much of the water out of the mix as possible. Since we had the cool new press to try out, we placed the mush inside and pressed down on the handle to squeeze as much water out as we possibly could, while compressing it into a puck. After a few pucks were compressed, we realized that the water was making a mess on the floor in our carport. I placed a second 5-gallon bucket underneath the press to catch all of the water we were pressing out. The results were cool, and our first puck was fairly compressed. We were hoping to achieve a denser puck, so we talked about what might work better.
We decided to experiment a bit and discussed adding various mediums into the mix, to see if we could achieve a denser puck that hopefully would result in longer burn times or more heat. John stated that the addition of wax to the egg carton fire starters helped them burn better, so we thought we would give it a try. I have a stash of bees wax that I use to make salves, so he quickly set off to retrieve some to add to the mixture. We continued to press out the pucks, but still were not happy with the density. Hum, what can we add to the mixture? What burns well? Wood! My hubby cuts a lot of wood to stack into our woodshed for use in the winter months. What’s left behind is a pile of sawdust on the woodshed floor. Since wood burns well, we decided to add in a pile of sawdust to the mix. The results are exactly what we were hoping to achieve, a puck that will hopefully burn hot, for a long time that was incredibly dense. 
After the bricks or pucks are made, they need to dry out before they are ready for the fire. The drying process can take 2-3 weeks on average. We decided to help them along a bit. We placed grates on top of bricks above our wood stove. We are hoping that the indirect heat from the wood stove helps them dry out much more quickly. As I am writing this blog, they have been drying for 4 days. They currently feel almost completely dry, but for good measure, I am going to let them sit for a few more days until we try our burn test.
I am excited to test out the three types of pucks 1. Paper only; 2. paper with bees wax; and 3. paper with bees wax and sawdust, to see which one burns the best and for the longest amount of time.
Stay tuned for John’s update on how the press was built, as well as the results from the burn test.
Until then, check out my silly you tube video on the process, where I am continually reminded that I sound VERY Minnesotan!
Happy Homesteading folks!
Katie