The Burn Pile

Every year we collect all the sticks that fall in the yard, along with branches that we prune and we pile them up in a spot in the pasture just south of the garden and west of the barn.  The pile grows and grows and grows.  During Thanksgiving time or on New Year's Eve, we'll light up the burn pile. Here's a photo essay that chronicles last year's bonfire: The Great Fire of 2013.

We get benches and seat them around the blaze and maybe get some marshmallows and hot dogs to eat.  After a long hot summer, it is nice when the cool fronts blow through and you can actually sit outside without being carried away by mosquitoes. We sit and watch the fire and talk and enjoy each other's company.  Simple entertainment for simple folk.  One year we lit it up and our neighbors thought our barn was on fire and called the fire department.  Trucks started showing up at the house and I had to run and go explain to them that we were just having a bonfire and everything was fine.

The Burn Pile of 2014

We only burn wood in our pile.  No plastic or other trash is burned in the burn pile. After a few days when the fire finishes smoldering, I'll scoop up all the ashes and spread them all throughout the garden.  Our household trash is not burned in our pile.  We gather the trash that our family produces into a garbage can that Benjamin rolls down to the roadside for pickup on Friday morning. Sometimes he'll forget and won't get it out there in time for pickup, but really it is no big deal.  We compost most of the biodegradable stuff we produce, so usually our trash can is only 1/3 to 1/2 full on any given week.

That got me to thinking.  When I was growing up, it was unheard of to pay someone to come pick up your trash where we lived.  Like Benjamin, one of my chores included gathering the trash.  Only I didn't put it in a can that I rolled to the side of the road.  We had a burn barrel.  The burn barrel was simply a 55 gallon oil drum that my Dad had used a cutting torch to cut the top out of.  We set it on some bricks in the back yard and punched holes in the bottom of it with a chisel so that the rainwater would not fill it up.

Once a week, I would consolidate all of our trash throughout the house into one and would bring it out to the burn barrel before I would catch the bus for school.  I'd have a box of kitchen matches with me and I'd look for some tissue paper in the trash to start the fire with.  Pretty soon the fire would be roaring and smoke would be billowing out through the woods.  I can remember the way that a plastic bag would burn, dripping melted burning plastic down the side of the barrel, making weird noises as it dripped.  If I close my eyes, I can still smell the smell of burning trash. Ugghh!  If you live in a neighborhood and would try to pull that off today, well, you wouldn't win any popularity contests, that's for sure.

The bricks that I talked about in the paragraph above caused the burn barrel to be off the ground so that you could get your hands underneath it.  This was important, because when it filled with ashes, we backed up the truck to the burn barrel, put the tailgate down, and lifted up the heavy barrel into the back of the truck and we'd take it to the dump.

The dump was not like the sanitary landfills you see today where you back up to big dumpsters.  Our dump was a series of huge trenches that were cut into the ground with a backhoe.  It was always muddy and stinky at the dump.  You would back up to the trench and try to get in the back of the truck without getting too much mud on your shoes.  Then you'd tip the can over and try to pour all the contents of the barrel into the trench without dropping the barrel in the trench.  Hard work.  One other memory of the dump was the junkyard dogs that inhabited the place.  I think people brought strays and left them there.  They were ugly and mean.  I would assume that this Jim Croce probably got the idea for his "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" song where he sings about junkyard dogs by visiting his local dump:

Image Credit

Hmmm... How did I get to talking about such a distasteful subject while on my lunch break?  Back to our burn pile!  Our burn pile is a much more pleasant subject. It won't stink.  Burning live oak and pecan branches smell good.  There will be no trash involved.  Although I can't make any promises on whether or not mud will be involved.  While there won't be any junkyard dogs by the burn pile, there will definitely be a couple of curious goats around when we light it up.