Kindling for Campfires

Series Summary

Winter campfires are all the rage. What better way to stay warm in the snow? Gather around with a group of friends and trade stories and roast marshmallows. Or you could stay inside and watch cable television and wait for spring. But what fun is that?

In this free series of winter fun lessons, our expert outdoor guide will tell you exactly how to build a campfire in the show, from finding and arranging the wood to fire safety to cooking your favorite food over the open flame.

Video Transcript

"SHERYL MCGLOCHLIN: Hi, this is Sheryl with ExpertVillage.com, and today we're talking about how to build a campfire in your own backyard in the snow. Now, the first thing we've done is made sure that we completely cleared out our entire campfire, so it's nice and clean. The next thing you need are three sources--three things to start a fire. You need a heat source like matches or a lighter, and then you need kindling, which is like--and we're going to talk about that in a second, and then you need wood. Now, I want to talk about kindling, different types of kindling. Dry leaves are a great kindling, and Oscar is working on making some more kindling just from a log. We're cutting down some really thin shaved pieces of wood. And we're going to start--that'll help us get our fire started. And then the third thing is newspaper. And Mike and Anna are over here helping us get our newspaper and just kind of wadding that up and that's another great source of kindling. Leaves, dried grass, anything dry that will burn, the little pieces of wood, and newspaper are three great sources of kindling."