Burn, Baby, Burn

Pyromania is hereditary....at least in my family. When I was small, the thing that I remember my mom doing every spring was raking leaves and twigs and burning them in small controllable piles on the driveway. She liked the controllable piles after first hand experience as a kid with an out of control fire that nearly burned down her childhood house and lit the corn field on fire. Personally, I like the "mostly controllable" fires.

Fire is an amazing way of cleaning up a lot of last year's dead fall and left overs. What would take me a day and a half to rake and haul takes a fire about thirty minutes to eliminate. It lives and breathes on the old leaves that I would otherwise have to bag up, it rollicks along on dead grass that clings to my garden fence, it makes short work of a steep hillside that we don't mow. It takes on a life of its own and I, for one, am very grateful.

Fire was often utilized by Native Americans on the grasslands. They would light the prairie up because they knew that the buffalo were attracted to the fresh spring grass that would rapidly grow up on a burned field. Burning off the old thatch made the new growth easy to get to and would draw the buffalo into the area for easier hunting. Burning eliminated a build up of dangerous biomass - this is what leads to such catastrophic forest fires out West. So much dead fall, grasses, needles, etc build up and form a thick, but highly volatile, layer that when something does happen to catch a spark from a lightning strike - it all goes up like kindling. For so many years the forestry departments were against lighting forest fires to help control the understory, but now I think they are starting to realize that in small doses, a fire can be a very good thing.

When I say I like the "mostly controllable" fires it is because I don't usually form piles - I let the fire run, but I have had personal experience with lighting my entire farm on fire accidentally. It was mid afternoon one windy day in March and I had just taken some paper out to burn in the "burning barrel" - a very country way of disposing of most things that will burn. I didn't pay much attention to the rather tall, dry grass about eight feet away from the barrel. I walked back in the house and helped the kids get their afternoon snacks before I looked out the window and said, "Where did all the fog......" And then it hit me that it wasn't fog - it was smoke and it covered the entire farm. I raced out of the house screaming for the two oldest kids to grab pails and hoses while I ran for the rake and shovel. By the time that I got into the tree line north of our house the fire had already ripped through and attacked one of the untended brush piles that had been sitting there.

To this day, I can remember how amazingly hot that fire was and I have such profound respect for people who fight forest fires. I could not come within 20 feet of that brush pile and only managed to save one of the pine trees with a well aimed bucket of water. Between myself, and my 8 year old son and 5 year old daughter we were able to put out most of the fires within about an hour, but the final yell from my daughter to say that the barn was on fire just about floored me.

The fire had crept along the ground working against the wind and finally reached the corner of a Morton building that we have. Just on the other side of the wall was a large pile of straw and somehow the fire had slithered under the wall and started the pile to smoldering. A pile of burning straw is almost the exact opposite of the brush pile....there is no obvious source of fire and yet the entire thing belches and billows smoke. We had to completely dismantle the straw pile and then pour water over the entire thing to get the fire out. It was a long and very tiring afternoon, but the farm that spring was beautiful with all the sticks and twigs gone and the bright green grass growing out of the blackened ground.

Suffice it to say that I have learned to only light a fire after setting the stage a little. I now have water buckets filled and at the ready and a hose hooked up and ready to go before any matches hit the ground. If I am home alone, I am sure to have my cell phone at the ready to call for help - either family or professional if the need should arise. I set the "buffer" zones where the fire will run up against some green grass, dirt or line of water that I have laid down and extinguish all on its own.

And so armed, I set free the fire to clear the way for new grasses, and it burns off the leftovers in my garden. All the leaves that reside over the winter in my perennial flower beds are raked and hauled down to the garden to be burned and then tilled in for mulch and compost. It is a wonderful way to consolidate biomass and still use it for creating a sustainable soil. Burning off my garden in the early spring leads to a blackened earth that then heats up faster and will help seeds to germinate a little earlier. And at the end of a tiring, stressful day, there really is no release like giving life to a little fire and watching it eat the ground up in its fervour....no wonder my mother loves it so.

Pictures and Ponders of Spring

They crawl out of warm mulch, just after snow, In hidings from tunnels row after row; They rest among dew drops and fly out to bring Their red spots of colors to gardens of spring.

~Marlene Glaus

If you've never been thirlled to the very edges of your soul by a flower in spring bloom, maybe your soul has never been in bloom.

~Terri Guillemets

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier in the spring and stay that way later in the fall.

~Nadine Stair

Why try to explain miracles to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.

~Robert Brault

It's spring fever. This is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want,but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!

~Mark Twain

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

House Bill 589

I know I should stay out of politics, but I am a lot like a moth to a flame - I know I will be torched, but I am just drawn to it, especially when it has to do with farm legislation. Recently a bill has been passed in the house of representatives in Iowa that will make it a felony to videotape any farms without the farmer's permission. House Bill 589. This I find very disturbing. I know it is their farm and they should have privacy to farm as they see fit, but at the same time they are raising food that people will be eating and we, too, should have some right to know how those animals are raised and handled. Farming has gone from being about small family farms to an industrial machine and I find it frightening that the consumers have no knowledge of what goes on behind those closed CAFO doors. The argument, of course, is that if you "see" something you are to report it to the proper authorities. Good luck with that. First of all, you can't "see" what goes on inside those confinement units - you can't see if the air is so polluted that the animals can hardly breathe, you can't tell if the animals are too crowded and therefore over stressed, you can't see if they are periodically beaten about by handlers. There is no transparency to a CAFO building. Second of all, who are the "proper" authorities? As a veterinarian I have come across instances of needing to report abuse and it can get a little dicey trying to figure out who to contact that will actually see that something is done - unless you get media on board and then enough people get angry and the "authorities" are then forced into having to actually do something about a case. There is just not a lot of accountability for some of these farmers. Dairy farmers are probably monitored the best. Their bulk tank where all the milk goes gets checked each time the trucks come from the dairy to collect the milk and if there are any illegal antibiotics in the milk, or the cell counts are too high, there are repercussions. We have no similar system in hog, chicken or turkey confinements, or in the production of beef steers. Maybe there should be a law requiring a camera placed in every confinement unit that are uploaded to a web site.....if we monitored our food like we monitor the eagles in Decorah, the entire food system might be vastly different. The biggest thing that worries me is, what are they trying to hide? Clearly, to go through all the work and effort to make a bill that will make it a felony to photograph or videotape animals that may be abused or neglected.....what are they afraid of? That they will be caught? I just don't think it is worth the time and money to pass this legislation. I think that if farmers are worried that they will be videotaped and exposed for animal neglect and cruelty, then maybe they should rethink how they are doing business. And for the consumers, I think that they should take legislation like this to heart and know that the farmers in these states apparently have something that they want to hide.....I, personally, would not want food from those farmers. It comes back around again to "know your farmer". Anyone wondering what kind of food I grow or how my animals are treated....they are welcome to come out and visit any time and I will be happy to give a tour and let you take pictures - that is what I would want from a farmer if I was buying food from them, and yet most of the country goes out to eat or cooks food at home without the foggiest notion of where their food came from or how it was treated. Needless to say, I have called my state senator and let him know my thoughts on the issue in the hopes that this bill can be killed in the senate. I would encourage everyone else in Iowa to do the same if you care at all about the food you eat. It just doesn't seem to be a bill that is worth while - it decreases the transparency of the food system rather than increasing it and while I can see the farmer's point behind wanting some privacy, I cannot account for their wanting to hide whatever monstrosities they may be committing and if they truly fear being photographed or videotaped, they need to reconsider what they are doing. The fear of media attention is the only check and balance that we have for many of these farms at this point.

Spring Fever

I become a bit stir crazy when the weather warms up even a little. When spring starts to roll around some people clean their houses....I clean the forest. Early spring is the prime time to trim, prune, cut, sculpt, whittle or any other thing that you can image doing with branches. It is also the project that I can do that allows me to be outside working, but doesn't entice me into digging in the dirt and planting seeds or plants that I know will not be able to withstand the frosts yet to come.

I start with the "twig" pile. This is a pile, or rather two piles, that I have maintained for almost four years now. When we moved onto the farm almost eight years ago, there were three rows of evergreens on the north side of the house. They had been planted as a wind break and were very useful as such, but unfortunately they had been attacked (and are still being attacked) by anthracnose - a fungal infection that attacks trees that are in close, crowded conditions. The trees were so congested that very little air could flow through them at all. All the dead limbs were cut down and most of them were bonfire foder. The ones that were not immediately torched were placed in very loose piles on the very eastern edge of the tree strip to avoid having the predominant western wind blow the fungal spores into the remaining trees. A few years ago I finally got around to sorting out some of these twigs.

My husband thinks I am crazy, but what he fails to realize is two things: 1) working in the woods and communing with the trees makes me very happy. The happier I am, the less likely I am to let my frustration at not being able to get in the garden yet drive me over the edge.... 2) and possibly more importantly, all the "twigs" that I bag up for the winter are the kindling that helps to make his split wood actually burn. His great big pile of beautifully split wood would take forever to get to burn without the help of hot little pine sticks.

Pine trees get a bad rap when it comes to being a good wood for fuel - they don't burn as cleanly, too much creosote produced so it clogs the chimney, and they really only have the central trunk that can be split into firewood so you don't get nearly as much from a pine tree as you would from a deciduous tree. All the branches are typically too small to be of much use as firewood....but they are stellar kindling branches. The sap in those small branches dries to become like solid kerosene and they can heat up a wood burner in short order on cold winter mornings.

So, armed with a loppers, a hand saw, a leaf rake, a garden rake, and a shovel I set out to clean up the woods. The piles that I maintain are essentially branches that I have taken down the year or two before and allowed to dry fully - I simply move them from one place to another and pare them down a bit in the process. I stack them up to form rudimentary "fences" in one corner of the tree strip and this will serve to catch any wayward soccer balls or pails that blow across the yard during one of many summer storms. By stacking the wood up, it also helps to dry it out so that it is that much better at starting a fire in the winter. As I move each piece of wood I test it to see how dry and breakable it is. Most branches, after drying out for 2 years, can be broken relatively easily with a well placed boot on the midshaft of the branch. If they still have "spring" in them, they are placed back on the twig wall for another year.

After I move one pile, I dig up any of the rouge scrub trees that insist on spreading like wildfire using the shovel and all the leaves and dry grass get raked down into the ditch for eventual burning. The sticks that I have managed to break apart get loaded into the left over feed bags from the year and then they are stacked in the hog house for the summer to stay nice and dry.

Crazy, I know, but once again, it is a job that I can do outside on those beautiful spring days when you can almost believe that winter is completely finished, but you know in your heart that there will be at least one or two more snows before it completely gives up and heads south as the world rounds the sun again.

After I finish with the old wood, I start tackling the new dead branches. There are always more than I care to think about - branches that I have watched and tried to keep healthy, but they have finally given in to the canker that grows rampant in a tight knit bunch of trees. So, I wander around with the loppers on one shoulder and the saw on the other and I cut off what can be reached and then typically, I will find a ladder and go a little higher each year on a tree to cut off more and more of the dead branches. The amazing thing to me is how many new growth branches will emerge when you allow the tree to have a little light and air. The trees by our house were simply planted too close together and therefore spread their disease too easily. By cutting away the dead stuff I have allowed more airflow and sunlight into the forest and helped to reduce the spread of disease.....It works the same for trees as it does for people and animals.

The "newbie" branches are stripped of all the small stuff and then added to the twig fence to dry for a year or so. Hence, my supply continues and I don't see it ending any time too soon. We are always looking for a place to plant another tree and I have found that many small saplings take root in the forest below the mature trees - all I have to do is move them carefully to the place that I want them and then protect them from the lawn mowers.

One of my grandmother's favorite sayings was "Waste not, want not" and I have found this to be very sage advice because in the depth of winter, when the house is all of about 54 degrees and you really need to get a fire going quickly, nothing beats hot little kerosene sticks. So, I spend these first wonderfully warm days of spring outside playing with sticks and humming along in my head the childhood rhyme of "1, 2, buckel my shoe...3,4 shut the door....5, 6 pick up sticks....7, 8, lay them straight"....and I am happy in my thought that the fires of winter are, finally, a long way off.

And So It Begins....

It's March....at last. We have finally reached that magic "6-8 weeks before the last frost" range. Time to start the spring planting.

Most traditional farmers won't be in their field yet until sometime in April or May. I never claimed to be traditional....I bring the dirt inside.

It is almost frightening how simple it is to grow things. A little seed, soil, water, sunshine and love and you have yourself meals for a year. So, on a sunny Sunday I pulled out of the cupboard all the seeds that I had saved for the year and sorted through them. There are the piles of seeds that need to be directly seeded in the ground when it warms up a bit, there are the seeds that are reserved for kids to plant, and then there are the wonderful can be started indoors 6-8 weeks before the last frost plants.

I tracked down the trays that I use from year to year. These are approximately $10 at any hardware or garden store and, if you use them carefully, can be used year after year. I dumped out any and all remaining soil that was still clinging to the sides of the trays, rinsed them in dilute bleach solution to be sure there clean and virus free. We have found that cardboard egg cartons also work well and can be torn apart and planted directly in the dirt when the seeds are ready to transplant.

The trays are filled and the soil moistened with a little water to make planting easier. A bag of dirt can go a long way. I go for organic stuff if I can just as a standard of practice - less chemicals typically equals healthier foods. I tried my own compost once and that works as well- as long as you can recognize the seeds that will be emerging - typically compost will still harbor weed seeds that can take over, so I tend to stick with the bag of purchased dirt....one bag can start my entire garden and then some.

I survive the winter on the anticipation of playing in the dirt. It doesn't matter that it is still cold outside or that the dirt is in a bag - it is still dirt. I have found this small spring celebration to be quite an attraction and will have at least one kid that wanders by and says, "Oh! Can I help!" to which I somewhat reluctantly say, "Of course!" and hand over my seeds and my tweezers to them while I continue filling trays and labeling what they have planted.

A little warm water shower from the sink, a cover to keep them warm and moist, a sunny spot in the sun and voila! - three days later....the makings of coleslaw start poking up with onions, leeks, tomatoes, peppers, and broccoli to follow soon after.

My kids sometimes ask me about my perception of "God" and quite honestly, this is what I show them - the miracle of a seed - be it animal or vegetable. A small packet of genetic information that holds within it the blueprint to build another such being with similar, but not identical, characteristics. What I find so completely amazing is the complexity of the different species and how all of that is contained in something as small as (or in the case of animals - smaller than ) the head of a pin. That level of complexity and planning amazes me and the fact that I choose which seeds to plant and maintain gives me pause because now I, too, have a hand in what genetic information is propagated in the world. I take this responsibility very seriously. I see these tiny little seedlings not only as plants that I will one day eat, but they are the source of more seeds that I will rely on next year to plant again. They have lives and progeny and generations just like people do. They are very important beings in the world. Just because they don't have legs to move about and they eat soil doesn't mean that they are necessarily any less important than the rest of us. These thoughts often lead to me donating any extra seedlings to people to plant at their houses because I simply can't stand the thought of wasting even one.

So, it has begun. My family has grown to include these little seedlings that I will look after, care for, glean food from, and use to propagate next year's seeds. The Chinese know it best, "One who plants a garden, plants happiness. If you would be happy all your life, plant a garden."