2015 Annual Field Fire April , 2015

The winter of 2015 was long and hard.  Field burning was late and I must confess that uploading the photos and writing this descriptive piece was even later - it actually wasn't done until early 2016.

The rear guard bands were burned off on Tue April 14.  These I don't even have any pictures.

The field behind Mom's house was burned Thu April 16.  We needed to wait until there was a southeast or east breeze to do this in order to prevent the fire from moving into Dr. Marone's woods.  

This is a very important concept whenever burning fields.  You must always work with the wind, never against it.  While burning can be done on a calm day, it tends to be quite slow and boring.  A bit of wind can be your friend, allowing fast-moving spectacular CONTROLLED blazes - or it can turn your field burning adventure into your worse nightmare. (Go look at last years 2014 field fire...)   Always be aware of which direction the wind is blowing from and use it to your advantage.    PLAN CAREFULLY!!!.

We started the field behind Mom's at the topmost part and let it burn back against the wind.  There is a guard band (mowed section) at the top so the wind cannot blow it further.  Although the fire burns back against the wind slowly keep an eye on it for a while in case any pieces blow across the guard band and catch the next section on fire.

We then slowly continue down along Dr. Marone's woods.  With the woods and wind to our backs or coming up from the bottom it is easy to put out any fire that slowly tries to advance toward the woods.

Finally when we get to the bottom the top and side are partially burned off providing a safety area that is already burned.  Setting off the bottom and letting the wind carry it away up the hill is spectacular (get ready for photo-ops) but when it hits the fire we set initially that is slowly advancing from the top down - it's all over pretty quickly.


We finished the top of the hill on Sat April 18.  Winds were light so it was uneventful (read - boring).  Also burned the orchard field behind Lee & Tammy's house and then to finish the day out burned the pasture out the road. It was quickly becoming almost too green to burn.