Six Months Later...

A little more than six months after the hurricanes, we still have reminders of the carnage around us.  Our son, Russ, is about to move back into his home as the contractors will finish up shortly, remodeling his home following a large tree falling through his roof.  We still look around at broken branches ("widow makers") high up in our live oak trees - reminders of the storm.  We are blessed, though.  Many people lost their homes and livelihoods.  

This weekend we wanted to incinerate a big reminder of Laura and Delta that we walk by every single day on the way to the barn.  The "burn pile."  After the storm, we hauled all the branches, limbs, and assorted sticks to the pasture and stacked them in a big, long windrow.  This weekend we started the fire to bid farewell to the one of the last remaining vestiges of tropical wrath still on our property.

Buckwheat the billy goat with his long goatee looks on, as does Belle, our livestock guardian dog.  We separated the long windrow into an individual pile.  Lighting the whole thing up would burn our pecan trees to the east and our newly planted tomatoes to the west.  As the fire consumed the branches, we would toss more on, being careful not to let it get too high.

It didn't take long until the entire pile was burned down to a mere fraction of its original size.  In the photo below, the pile originally stretched almost to the t-post in the foreground.  Now there is lots more room to walk, roll out hay bales, and much less hiding places for hens to lay their eggs.  These new hens are crafty.  We'll discover 'hidden nests' after searching around when we don't collect as many eggs in the nest boxes.

We weren't done with fires or smoke just yet.  As the fire smoldered and smoked, we were about to start another fire.  First, we seasoned up one of the briskets from one of our Jersey bulls with a rub we like.

I started my charcoal chimney fire starter (an easy way to start charcoal without lighter fluid).

Put the brisket on the smoker...

And watched and patiently waited for 6 hours while the brisket smoked at around 250 degrees.  Our Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker does a great job.  It requires monitoring, though, to ensure your temperature stays somewhere between 210 - 250 degrees.  This is easily accomplished by opening or closing the air vents and tossing a few more chunks of pecan or live oak wood in on occasion.

We used cut up chunks of pecan branches and live oak branches we lost in the storms to flavor the brisket.  It turned out delicious.  

The Burn Pile - Hurricane Laura Edition

A full month and a week after the hurricane, I had a Saturday off where I could take care of some things that sorely needed some action.  We don't live in town so we don't have curbside pickup of trees and debris.  Or so we thought.  Tricia got word that they would be picking up limbs and storm debris for rural citizens.  We burned a whole bunch of limbs and sticks in the pasture, but we still had a bunch left.  Tricia and the boys had stacked a huge pile by the road in anticipation of the truck to come pick it up.  We waited and waited and waited, but it the truck never came.

Finally, we gave up hope.  I figured I would do it myself.  I backed up our truck to the pile and slowly gathered the debris into the bed.  I took the photo below after I had already picked up about half of the pile.  It took a long time.  I started around 9:30 and finished at 3:30. 

Despite not having roadside pickup of debris, I am still grateful to live in the country.  So many neighbors waved while passing by.  Others stopped to talk.  Just friendly country folk.  One neighbor rolled down her window to let me know she had just stopped by and put a bag of oranges and two bags of grapes "just to bless us."  I wouldn't trade simple, country living for anything.

It was such a beautiful day, I didn't mind working.  Not one bit.  I wish I had counted the number of truckloads I took to the back for burning.  Slowly, I began to put a dent in the pile.

Before too long, I was done!  The grass under the pile was dead from being covered by branches and leaves for a month, but it will grow back.

After the second load to the back, I set the pile on fire.  Despite being a little green, the fire roared, quickly consuming the leaves and branches.  Each time I would bring another truckload of sticks and limbs, I would dump it onto the fire and the flames would reach back up to the sky.

As the pile in the front of the house by the road got smaller, so did the pile in back of the house as a result of the insatiable appetite of the fire.  Pay attention to the Rubbermaid water trough lying on its side in the background behind the fire.  It becomes a central character in the rest of the story.

The nosy animals came to check out the happenings.  Each time I would open the gate to back the pickup truck in and unload yet another load onto the fire, the cows and goats would gather at the gate.  I had to be real careful to quickly close the gate or they would get out.  Sometimes the cows would sit right in the path of the truck, and I would have to honk the horn to get them to move.  Pay particular attention to the head of the bull in the bottom right-hand side of the photo below.  He plays another leading role in the story that follows.

On Saturday afternoon, the job was done.  I was tired, but happy. It is rewarding to finish a job of an honest day's work and see the fruits of your labors.  The fire burned all Saturday night.  By Sunday afternoon, all that remained of the pile was a heap of smoldering coals.  

Sunday night at 10PM I was turning off the lights to go to bed.  Something didn't seem right.  I looked out of the french doors and saw a huge fire in the pasture.  It looked like the barn might be on fire!  I yelled to Benjamin to meet me outside.  We both ran out in time to see flames leaping 15 feet into the air.  When I determined that it was NOT the barn afire, I thought it may be a ruptured gas pipeline.  It was burning with such vigor.

As we ran closer, we were able to identify that it was the Rubbermaid trough burning.  And boy, did it burn!  There was nothing we could do but stand and watch it as the flames lit up the surrounding area and thick black smoke filled the air.  We determined what happened.  Bulls, as they are apt to do, like to push and rub on things with their heads.  The empty trough is used as a feeding trough.  The other two catch rainwater off the roof for drinking.  The bulls had pushed the empty trough into the smoldering coals and it caught on fire.

Now we'll have to find another bucket to use as a feeding trough come feeding time!  Good news: the burn pile was gone.  Bad news: So is our feeding trough.  Oh well, it could always be worse.

  

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.