Burnin'

A good portion of Dan's time is spent tending to pasture. Fixing fences in pastures, mowing pastures, removing logs, rocks and stumps from pastures. The previous owners only had a couple of horses and didn't use most of the pasture for grazing, so it needs an extreme cleanup. Dan has been removing rocks and stumps so he doesn't have any obstacles while brush-hogging the gazillion red cedars and thorn bushes (mostly blackberry and multi-flora rose). And he's been cutting scrappy trees and making large burn piles - about 40 of them all over the property. The problem is that we had such a wet winter, the wood is just now dry enough to burn. Which is what we did Saturday morning. Here you can see a couple piles burning and many more in the background ready to be lit.

Dan lit about 8 piles on fire and with a hoe managed the edges so our whole pasture didn't catch fire. Ideally you want it to spread a little... burning off the old growth is a great way to let spring grasses come in. You just have to be careful that you don't start more than you can handle in the event the wind picks up.



This shot was taken from the pasture looking up towards the house. It's not really as close to the house as it looks.




Here's one of our pastures that is finally greening up. It doesn't have anything to do with burnin' at all. Isn't it pretty though?




One hot stump. If you look close, you can see flames deep in the stump and some cool looking smoke rolling out.