Pyromania!!!

We recently purchased another farm.  This new farm has been sitting empty for the past three years.  No cows on it eating the grass.  No hay being baled.  Nothing.  So, in order to get it ready to use, we need to get the old dry, dead grass off of it so that new, young tender shoots of grass will grow.  Well, the way we do that around here is to burn the field.  Burning a field is kind of cool . . . and kind of scary.  You certainly don't want the fire to get away from you and burn more than you intended to burn.  And, heaven forbid, you SURE don't want to burn the neighbor's ground.  That is a NO NO!  But after the yucky grass is gone, and the green grass starts to grown, well, it really is a sight to see.

In order to be able to control the burning field, we start by burning strips of ground around the fences to act as firebreaks or buffers so the fire doesn't get out of hand.  Here, I'll show you.

Here we are burning a strip of ground near the fence. 

We use a spray tank filled with water to put out the fire on both sides, and let it keep burning forward.

We ran out of water, so Cole had to go home and bring another tank filled with water.  We pumped the water from the tank on the flat bed, to the spayer tank. 

Cole was our fire starter.  He kept spread the fire forward.  The hubby used the sprayer to put out the fire, and me, well, I'm the tractor driver!

We burn against the wind.  We don't want the wind to spread the fire.  So the wind was constantly blowing the smoke in our faces.  Yuck! 

This is what the strip of land looked like after we burned.  This strip of land has nothing left the burn, so when we start the fire to burn the entire field, it will stop when it gets to this strip of land.  At least that's how it's SUPPOSED to work :0!  Sometimes the wind cooperates, and sometimes it doesn't.

Three things to remember when you are burning large tracts of land:  #1, you want to burn on a day with very little wind (which is hard to find Missouri); #2, you want to have lots of help on hand, and #3, you have to have lots of water to put out the fire! 

After a field is burned, and you get a spring warm,  the green shoots of grass just seem to explode on a warm sunny day.  It really is a pretty sight to see!