fire season?

[fishing_guy]

Usually our fire season in Minnesota is in early spring before the plants start greening up.  Imagine our surprise when we went up to our up-north getaway and saw this:



A local stopped in our driveway to admire our rusting hulk of a '37 Ford, so we got the story from him.  Our neighbor to the east was burning brush on Sunday.  The winds picked up on Wednesday and rekindled the flames.  It took out about 3 acres of lowland.

Luckily someone (maybe the neighbor) called in the DNR.  They entered the property through an open area by the road and brought in a bulldozer and kept the fire from getting to the woods and campers.



2 lessons learned.

1.  As MD says, keep a firebreak from anything valuable.  We do keep the grass trimmed for about 400 ft by the campers.

2.  Make sure there is a way into your property.  Gates are nice, but as the local said, if they need to get in badly enough, you will be replacing your gate.

We had no idea this happened and are very thankful this didn't spread any further.  We lost some small oaks and a few small pines that got dozed in the fire fighting efforts.  The bad news:  My wife now wants to plant the area in trees, as she has a clean slate.

[Redoverfarm]

Glad you were spared.  This year was extremely dry in this neck of the woods.  I think ours starts the 15th.  Is burning in an outside fireplace considered an open fire?   

[rick91351]

Sorry to see the fire...about reforestation check with the local or state or even Federal Agencies (IE state forest department, or federal BLM or USFS).  Often times they will have seedlings available after such.  However what might look bad right now, chances are will bounce back and next fall you will not even notice.  Crawlers or dozers are a lot kinder to the land than some of other options believe it or not.  

Footnote: I know the USFS timber cruiser and we have discussed the matter.  I have an agreement with him and the USFS if they need to get cross my ranch property because of fire, just do it and we will cuss and discuss latter.  They border us for a mile and a half.  We have let them camp on our place and furnished them with water as well.  But here an acre fire in the late summer and early fall turns to a couple thousand acres with one wind gust and slow reaction time.  Here a lot of the local ranchers and home owners own these fire pumps on trailers with fifty to hundred gallons of water.  They can pretty well stop things until the Federal Government gets there with the air drops and helicopters.      

[MountainDon]

Sorry to hear of the fire... one never needs a surprise like that. Glad to hear that damage was minimal.