Monday, May 4, 2009

Burn

In an effort to be good stewards of the land, we burned over 60 acres today. The burn covered the native prairie and portions of the "CP25" CRP planting that we did several years ago. Over half of the CRP area was burned last year.

The burn started at about 11:00 a.m. and was not out until about 5:00. There were still a few spots smoldering, but it was done going anywhere.
The Heartland Conservation Services team, led by Terry Tank, did an excellent job. Dad was hoping to get a larger area burned, but Terry determined that it was not safe. He did not want the fire to escape into the swamp. As it was, the fire almost got away into a little wooded patch. We would not have minded that burning, but it bordered on out neighbor's property, and we wanted to keep the fire out of there. The team contained the flames quickly.
It was a very slow fire and hopefully burned off all the nasty brome grass.
The pasque flowers got singed, but were still standing, and I saw green prairie smoke plants in the burned areas.
I saw a couple of deer flee the area before the burn started, and saw a raccoon running around in the area that was done burning. I think he had hidden in the cornfield. Only part of that burned. When we left, there were geese on one of the sloughs we burned around. They'll all be OK.
The plants will green up soon and the grass will be super tall this year.
At least - that is what happened last year. :-)








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