Burning the field

This will be the last post I write with a cat wedged between me and my laptop. Skippy will be returning home probably on Tuesday. Jane is en route home after a month in Florida, and I’ll be glad to have her back. Probably more glad than she will be to be back, but at least we are supposed to have relatively warm temperatures by the weekend, making the climate shock somewhat less. I’m sure she will miss the fresh seafood, walking on the beach, and having Jan to do fun things with all the time. But she will have a nice gray cat to sit on her lap.

Gracie’s head continues to recover, although I think she might be turning into Nadia. The only way we could tell them apart was by their head feathers. Gracie’s were short, and Nadia’s were long. The new feathers are more like Nadia’s. The shafts are complete. They are tipped with tufts of emerging feathers, like tiny paint brushes.

Tufts of feathers barely emerging from the shafts

Yesterday we started burning the hay field. Terry tried without success to sell the hay a local farmer. After two bad experiences with different farmers, he finally agreed to my plan, which was burning. My hope is that it will rid us of invasive species and maybe allow some long-dormant native seeds to grow. It will be interesting to see if there is anything in the seed bank or not. It would be great if there were, but after all the years of corn/soy rotation, I’ll be amazed if we do see anything we haven’t already seen.

Terry watched anxiously all winter for conditions to be right to mow a grid of firebreaks through the field. The snow from December had to melt. The rain from January had to run off. The ground couldn’t be too frozen or too thawed. He got it done finally, and the wait began for a perfect day, when the ground was neither too wet nor too dry and, most importantly, the wind was going to be light for the whole day. We had a terrible experience once when we started a burn in the calm of the morning only to have it get away from us when the wind came up.

Yesterday was perfect. The wind was just enough to spread the fire without whipping it up uncontrollably. The temperatures were slightly above freezing, so the soil was only thawed on the very top. We started at about 9:00. There was a slight breeze from the south. Terry used a small propane torch to light the north side on the first block to back-burn the downwind edge. I stood by with a water sprayer to put out any flames that threatened to cross the firebreak and escape into the neighbors’ woods. It wasn’t a hard job. The grass was short enough and wet enough that the fire went nowhere.

Terry starting the burn with a small torch

Back burn on the downwind side

Terry then went to the south end. The fire spread more rapidly with the wind behind it, as predicted. By the time he was done, the wind had shifted to the east. Terry had gone to the west side to patrol the firebreak, leaving the torch in the Gator on the east side. I got it and started the parts that hadn’t burned.

Terry starts the fire on the upwind side

Terry with a water sprayer patrolling the west side of the burn plot

After a little while Hilda came out the help, although since there wasn’t much to do, we settled into watching voles and mice tear out of the grass to safety as the fire approached. The wind shifted around so much that Terry sometimes had to light the blocks on all four sides.

I had not watched grass fires much. The grasses we have are largely bunch grasses, meaning that they grow in clumps. In between the clumps, the grasses fall over and get matted. The fire often skipped over these spots. In the video, you can see one of the bunches go up in flames. What surprised me was how much heat was generated at the base of the bunch. The end of the video shows a mound glowing red.

We got four plots burned before lunch. After we ate quickly, we went back at it. Terry couldn’t stand crouching anymore and got out the big torch. The plus was that he could light the fire while standing; the minus was that he had to haul around the heavy propane tank.

The big torch

When we did the last plot on the north side, the voles really tore out of there. I was monitoring the south edge when Hilda told me she’d seen 6 voles already. I went down in time to see 5 more as well as a tiny rodent of some kind that came out dancing. It was about half the size of a mouse. It could have been a juvenile. It sure hopped around erratically.

North side done

We moved to the western side of the land after that. The plot closest to the creek took a long time to burn because it was so wet. We did two more plots after that. At the beginning of the second to the last one, I felt like I could carry on until dark. The last one, however, did me in. We had grown cavalier about back burning when we’d had so little trouble with spreading. The wind had been from the north/northeast all afternoon.  Our method was to start on the southeast corner and light the fire along the east and north edges. This last piece was drier over the firebreak and had more fuel. Furthermore, it really mattered if it jumped because we wanted to be done, and the next plot was a long one. I had to dash into the smoke again and again to put out the flames that moved steadily southward. I’d refilled my water reservoir before we started burning the last plot, and it was heavy. By the time the flames died, I was whupped. My shoulders ached from toting water; my legs ached from walking around in my heavy pack boots all day.

I dragged myself up to the house, took a shower, and had a cup of tea. It was a good day’s work. Terry’s plan is to have it all burned by Good Friday. We probably did ¼ of the total area yesterday. He is, therefore, way ahead of schedule.

We didn’t wash our smoky clothes in the hope that we might burn again today. I slept so well last night that I wished I could work outside all day every day.

We were debating trying to burn for a little while this morning before the wind came up. Just as it got light, however, we had a short period of rain. We canceled the burn and put all our stinky clothes in the washer. Terry and I were both still physically tired. As much as I love burning, it was a relief to have the day off. Maybe conditions will be favorable on another day when I can help.