For our February Junior Forest Wardens club night we made hobo stoves and firestarters in preparation of doing an outdoor cooking weekend outing with the kids. We took large cans from tomatoes or large coffee cans and used a can punch to put holes around the top and bottom edge of the can.  You just had to make sure that at least one hole was big enough to feed sticks though.  These types of stoves are twig burners and can heat things quickly due to the large burning surface area provided by the twigs.  Twig burners are mainly used as cooking fires. For the firestarters we made two different kinds.  We made egg carton ones that were filled with any combination of wood shavings, dryer lint and shredded paper.  Then the filled egg cartons were soaked in melted wax.  The second kind we made were chunks of wax wrapped in brown paper, like a candy. The kids had fun making their own designs for their stoves and putting together their firestarters. For our upcoming Saturday

This year my family decided to check out the Silver Skate Festival in Hawrelak Park.  On Feb 9th, in -30° weather we all bundled up and headed out after supper. The main daytime activities had ended at 5pm, but we were going with the intent to see the fire sculpture. When we arrived at the park it was quite dark and the signs for the entrance to the parking lot were not lit up in anyway, quite small and hard to see in the dark.  We ended up having to drive around the entire park as we missed the entrance and it's only one way traffic.  Once we finally parked we had to cross the park to find the tent we were looking for. They had a tent where you could make a lantern to carry in their procession to the fire sculpture.  We made it just in time to each make a lantern.   They were nice simple lanterns made out of a watch battery, led light, bamboo stick, tape and some packing foam wrap. When we were finished our lanterns, we headed over to the storytelling tent just in time t