Little Fire on the Prairie

One of the things that seems to happen on a lot of farms every early spring is the "burn-off" of the old grasses and such. Such fires happened naturally every few years or so on the original prairie, and the grasses and vegetation all seem to have adapted to it to the point of practically depending on it to grow. Many prairie projects use "prairie burns" to get rid of the dead grasses and weeds to create an environment where native plants can be re-established.

On our 5-acre plot, we had a chunk of land that we hadn't actually burned, or mowed, or done anything with really for two years. With the promise/possibility of getting some livestock this year, one of the things we wanted to do was to burn out the old stuff so that we have a nice stand of "fresh" pasture for either rotational grazing or for cutting hay. That old stuff is really tough to get a scythe through nicely, for instance - plus the dead grass really chokes the pasture.

We ended up dividing our work into some smaller parcels - with just Rob and me out there managing the fire, we didn't want it to get out of control for what are likely obvious reasons.

Here's an idea of what we were starting with, facing North.


and another shot facing Southeast.


Just to be as safe as possible, particularly since again, it was only Rob and me out there with our hoses and shovels, Rob mowed a strip around our intended burn area. We then wet down that mowed area pretty well before we started the fire. As it turns out, this provided a very effective firebreak.

You always have to take the winds into account - you don't want the wind too high or sweeping the fire along in front of you. The winds were coming out of the South that day at some 5 - 10 mph or so, and therefore we started in the north-eastern corner of our burn plot. Here's the start of the burn.

It only took a few minutes for it to really get going.

It's pretty neat to watch it move across the field.



Here's Rob with his shovel, making sure that the fire doesn't get near the corn crib.


Jonathan came out to help an eye on it with Rob - the firebreaks really did a good job, though.


In fact, here he is in front of one of those firebreaks, contemplating the fire.

Overall, it took about an hour or so to burn off the area we were after.



You can see how charred the ground looks after the fire goes through. It's amazing how quickly the grasses and such recover. Here's what the ground looks like about a week after the burn:


and another plot that is around two weeks:



and then three weeks later, quite green indeed.


When it comes time to scythe it down for some hay, we'll return to these pastures.