Fiacré's spade: Halloween Bonfire

The week started with some excitement. On October 27, Hilda found the first pullet egg. There has been another pullet egg every day or two since then. We can’t be sure yet whether or not there is more than one pullet laying. We do know for sure that none of the Americaunas are laying—all the pullet eggs so far have been brown.

Pullet egg, left, normal egg, right

Pullet egg among the hen eggs

Saturday was Halloween, of course. We scheduled our annual bonfire for that afternoon. Terry spent the month preparing for the fire by cutting down all the dead trees from the orchards and windbreaks whenever he had the chance.

I spent the morning making a cherry pie for Jane’s birthday, even though the actual day was weeks ago. I made a jack-o-lantern face with the steam vents.

Jack-o-lantern cherry pie

Nancy made some cute Halloween-themed snacks. She got the ideas from Pinterest. There were apple lips with marshmallow teeth, glued together with peanut butter. They weren’t as sweet as you might think from the marshmallows. Quite good, actually.

Apple lips and marshmallow teeth

She made witches brooms from string cheese and pretzels as well as deviled spider eggs. Not show are the “mummy fingers”, which were teeny wiennies wrapped in crescent rolls. So cute!

Witches brooms and spider eggs

Jane brought apple cider doughnuts, which we look forward to every year. I was too busy eating to take a picture.

Terry started the fire with gasoline. Boys will be boys.

Terry puts gasoline on the wood

This is the fire after it was lit. It was a blustery day; the brush was not very compact, and the first attempt did not take. Terry put more gas on the fire. It flashed up, but no one was injured.

The first flames

Once the fire got started, we began dragging more brush to the fire ring. It was sad. Here is our beloved plum trees. We only got plums one year, but they were the best plums ever! After that major reproductive event, it succumbed to “gummosis,” a bacterial infection. As the tree goes through freeze/thaw cycles, the bark loosens, allowing the bacteria to invade. This is a problem with all of the Prunus (stone fruits), Terry says, which make them tricky to grow in places with real winters.

The long sticks on the top are the branches of our plum tree

We burned many of the dawn redwoods, too. So sad. I love the dawn redwoods. I think they gave it up in the last polar vortex.

After all the wood was on the fire, Terry went around with the pitchfork now and then, putting the loose branches into the middle of the fire.

Terry tends the fire with his pitchfork

Here we are in our socially distant chairs, watching the fire.

Socially distanced around the fire.

As the afternoon went by, all the brush was burned up, leaving only the logs. These logs are from downed box elders and willow. Terry doesn’t use them in his wood stove because they burn up to fast. Even so, they didn’t seem to burn very fast in this fire.