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.
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.
