It's that time of year

It's that time of year again ..... time to burn off the pastures!

On Saturday, I knew that one of the rural fire departments was going to be doing a controlled burn across the road from our house.  We burned around our house 4 days before that, so the risk of our grass catching on fire again was very small (the only grass we didn't burn was the short stuff around the house), but an ember could land on the roof and catch the house on fire.  It's always important to be fire aware!

I was about a mile away from the fire when I took this picture.

This is in front of our house, we burned a few days before, but you can see the flames and smoke from across the road.  I want you to remember this tree.

If you look closely, you can see a fireman wearing a yellow vest on the right side of the picture.  He was setting fire to the grass beside the road.  The wind was from the northeast, so they set the fire on the south side of the property and let it burn backward; this keeps the fire burning slowly and it's less likely to get out of control as it burns against the wind.

These are two large brush piles all aflame.  The land had an overgrowth of trees a few years ago and it was cleared with a bulldozer and the piles have been sitting there for a year or two.  That meant that the piles were nice and dry and they had a pretty good flame going.

The smoke is starting to pick up.

The fire truck is sitting at the corner, watching and waiting, making sure the flames don't jump the road or get out of control.

Remember that tree that I said I wanted you to remember?  Same tree.

It got VERY smoky!

The piles of dead trees burned well into the night and the fire department stayed on scene making sure the fire didn't spread.  In a few weeks, our grass, as well as the grass across the road will be a beautiful green color as regrowth starts.  We haven't had a very harsh winter and burning cuts down on ticks and other creepy crawlies that didn't die off over the winter and it gets rid of any disease and weeds, as well.  Plus, it kills those pesky cedar saplings.  Damn invasive trees.  It also forces all of the ground critters to scatter, which means that the coyotes will probably be out in full force.  And that means my Honey can do a little more hunting.  :)