Issues → January/February 2009 → Home & Garden →
Cape Cod Kindling: Newspaper Knots
Start the fire with tied-up newspapers
by Edith Hunter
Useful stuff from 74 years of Yankee. Edith Hunter of Waitsfield, Vermont, submitted this in January 1991.
One of the most vivid pictures of my father that I have in my mind is of his making newspaper knots in the living room before laying a fire in the fireplace.
He called them "Cape Cod kindling" in honor of the region's famous parsimony. For people like us with an ample supply of newspapers and an almost insatiable need for kindling (our woodstoves are our primary source of heat), the Cape Cod solution is ideal.
To make newspaper kindling, take a section of about six pages, hold it by the centerfold, roll it, and tie it in a knot. We keep ours in the kitchen in an old wooden tub. That tub of knots is a great conversation piece. Visitors constantly ask us, "What are those?"
Reader Comments
Comment from Jenifer Lewis on February 24, 2009
This story reminds me of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter" in which she describes twisting hay into sticks to make them denser so they would burn longer and keep the Ingalls family warm during that bitterly cold and snowy winter. Inspired by that story, I often twist newspaper the way Laura described, but I never thought of knotting the twist. We live in a 210-year-old Federal in central Maine with a lot of fireplaces, and we read a lot of newspapers, so we will be making Cape Cod kindling now. Thanks for the idea!
Comment from Angela Bird on February 26, 2009
Great idea. We use a lot of newspaper also, but our kindling is running low right now. I'll start tying hte knots! Thanks for another great Yankee idea.
Comment from Joyce T. Holway on March 26, 2009
I was tickled to see the newspaper knots. I come from a long line of Cape Codders and can remember seeing just about all the adults I knew making these to get the fires started in stoves, fireplaces, even campfires. I just thought that was the way everyone did it. I can remember my father teaching us the "right" way to make them (and my mother teaching us the "easy" way). Then my Dad got a newspaper log roller and what was left over made great logs and helped to stretch the wood pile and keep the newspapers out of the town dump (no recycling plans in those days). In the Spring, the newspapers made pretty good landscape fabric to keep the weeds down in the flower and vegetable gardens.
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