Monday, January 25, 2010

"A somewhat controlled burn" Winter 2010

It's hard to believe it has been almost nine months since the last post. This year has been one of stutter steps and two steps forward, one step backward. We now have a donkey named Cocoa at the farm among our increasing renegade band of livestock. Maynard the dog has appeared and disappeared with all his funny but annoying and sometimes endearing quirks. Just last weekend we were going to create a series of wildlife clearings according to a USDA contract but got waylaid by a misunderstanding about a Bobcat we thought had been arranged for. Steve's nephew Stanton was there helping so we changed plans to take full advantage of his help.

On Friday we experimented with controlled burns as a means of clearing and maintaining our pasture and wildlife areas. The first was on a pasture area and can better be described as a "somewhat controlled burn". The Minor Hill Volunteer Fire Department only had to be called out one time. It was quite exciting and a bit exhausting after the adrenaline rush. Actually the burn was tentatively under control by the time the truck arrived but it was nice to get some water sprayed over the last bit just in case. In retrospect, the burn accomplished its purpose very nicely and even included the field border warm season grass area, though that was not our intent. We learned some VERY IMPORTANT lessons about advance containment and wind shifts,then tried our hand with better success at the warm season grass area next to the new pond. Rains Saturday night and dense fog on Sunday kept us from continuing with our controlled burn practices.

Logan and Stanton in the field before the burn.
Looking toward the burn area across the pond.
A couple of weeks after the burn.
Tanner is arranging for a dozer in a week or two to create the wildlife openings we were going to work on last weekend. More to come on that.

NWSG Control burn in early evening.
(note back burn in foreground)The warm season switchgrass area before the burn.

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