Pine Sap

I was reading a post on Chickens In The Road the other day about the different uses of pine sap. One of the uses mentioned was removing splinters (the other . Apparently, you just smear a little of the resin where the splinter is located and voila, the supreme stickiness of the sap removes it.

Both my mom and I are usually the people in my family most prone to getting splinters caught in our fingers (catfish fins, too). Growing up, my granddad was always the one that I ran to when I'd get a splinter. He always had a certain way of removing it without causing even a twinge. He'd take out his pocket knife, lightly scrape it over where the offending stick was, and in a split second, completely remove it. But he's not here anymore.

So after reading about the uses of pine, I decided to search our yard for a likely source. Considering we have quite a few pine trees growing on our land, I knew there had to be at least one that was oozing the gooey sap. I finally found on up the hill from the bucks' pen.

I took a little parchment paper to put it on and a disposable knife to use to scrape the sap off the tree. Then, I wrapped it up securely and stored it in the freezer. When one of us gets a splinter, now all I have to do is take the pine sap out of the freezer and let it thaw. 

Very messy stuff, by the way, which is why I used a knife I could throw away.