Necessity is the mother of what?

Brrrrr.

Yesterday it was SO cold... when we got home from church, Rick suggested building a fire.

We called down to the store on the corner to see how much a bundle of firewood would cost us. $20.00 for a "stack." Now, I'm not sure how big a "stack" is, but for $20.00 it had better be pretty big!

However, being the budget-conscious people that we are, we decided that there has got to be a more cost effective way to have a fire.

Enter: the golfcourse.

There is a place down from our house where the felled trees and vines are stacked, then burned. So we bundled up, loaded up the golf cart, and cruised down the path with our saw.

Here I am loading up the cart, proving that I can help too.

Presto! Enough wood to keep us warm for the rest of the day. We were proud of our resourcefulness... if only the story ended that tidy with a cup of hot chocolate and a romantic fire blazing. But it didn't. For reasons I can't explain, the smoke kept pouring into our living room. And YES, the damper was open. Upon further investigation, smoke was also coming out of the chimney. But everytime there was a gust of wind, smoke would billow out into the room. It was bad. We decided that we needed to get the burning wood OUT of the fireplace. So we rolled up the rug and Rick used the tongs to carry each smoldering piece out of the house, one by one. We ended up putting them inside the grill and closing the lid. That seemed to be the safest place to let them burn out. It was rather comical, once we got over the initial frustration. I wish I had a photo of the grill smoking. Next time we grill out, our steaks will have a unique "campfire" aroma.