Today my daughter asked for hotdogs on the open fire for dinner, to which I replied the snow just melted everything is wet or at best damp. She replied but daddy your good at starting fires, so once again it was Bushcraft dad to the rescue. After 20 min or so of searching the yard for "dry" tinder, I was able to fill half of my hat with "dry" grass. I am also blessed to have a mature pine tree in the corner of my yard that produces lots of pine cones every year, so I picked up a few of those off the ground as well. I decided I would try to start this fire with my "Bushcraft Belt Kit" just to get some practice with it in less than ideal conditions. I built a base for the fire using 3 forearm thick logs and placed my "dry" grass on top of my base (never start a fire without a good base, the ground is always damper than you think) and pulled out my 6" inch Ferro rod and my 30-year-old "Cold Steel" copy of an Opinel #6. After about 6 strikes on the Ferro rod, my grass bundle lit, and I held one pine cone in the flame until it was burning, added two more pine cones and a bundle of pencil or smaller sized kindling and I had a fire, 20 minutes later I was roasting hotdogs with a very happy 9-year-old.
Pine cones are a wonderful finder source, they are very easy to light with an open flame, they are full of pine resin, and burn very hot for 1-2 minutes depending on the size of the pine cone. It's not cheating if mother nature provided it, it's just good woodsmanship.