Frog Songs and Fire

With the warm weather, the spring peepers are out in abundance.  They serenade from the Marsh all day and all night.  I hear many different voices, making me wonder how big of a variety of frogs are out there with the peepers, singing away in their spring amorousness.  DD2 wants to try going out there with the camera and seeing if we can actually photograph any of them.  From past experience, I know frogs are pretty wily, so I think it will be quite the endeavor to get nice close-up pictures.  Not impossible, just time consuming.

Meanwhile, we had amassed quite a brush pile out in the field, near the woods, from our clean-up efforts.  The pile started on New Year's Day, when DH and both DDs went out to cut up the dead trees we'd felled last fall.  Anything too small to bother with for firewood went into a brush pile in the field, with the intent to later in the winter, drive the snowmobiles out and enjoy a campfire and hot dog roast.  Winter and abundant snow never really made it here this year, and so the pile still stood, now a nuisance for when the farmer who rents 18 acres off us would want to till the ground and ready it for spring planting. 

DH had added several thorn trees to the pile in recent weekends, doing trimming of the wild apples along the edge of the field.  The thorn trees had to go; until now we'd left them for any possible wildlife benefit they might provide.  But with us desiring to get to the apple trees to prune them, the thorn trees were a formidable barrier that were mastered with the loppers and the chain saw.

Our pile had become rather large, about as tall as DH, about six feet wide, and 20 feet long or so.  With the beautiful summer-like weather that rolled in Friday morning, and the field still bare, we decided it was time to remove the pile via fire.

After grilling our dinner, we loaded up lawn chairs into the bucket of the tractor, and headed out for a night of fire tending.

the pile

lighting the pile

Because most of the pile was green wood (tree tops, thorn trees, brush), it took awhile and some tinder to get it going.  But, once it caught, it went pretty quickly.

the pile ablaze

flame was about 12 foot high

DH had started the fire in the center of the pile, figuring the light wind (about 6-8 mph) we had would fan the flame toward the north end of the pile, and he would just fold the south end over that with the tractor once the center burned down.  What was really interesting, was that a vortex occurred, and the fire actually spread to the south, into the wind.  It was very cool to watch.

Once about half of the pile had been burned, DH used the tractor to push the two ends over the hot coals in the center.  Since it was totally dark by now, the branches were back lit by the fire inside of the pile.

All in all, it took about three hours to burn that entire pile down to a heap of coals about 6' long, 3' wide and 18" high.

On Saturday we did a little transplanting, moving two volunteer elms off the septic mound where we'd discovered them last summer, and into more appropriate locales.  I also dug up some lilac suckers from the bush closest to the house and put them into a row flanking the south side of the garden, as well as divided a chunk from the mock orange that grows near the base of the septic mound. 

DH did a little controlled burning of a section of the garden that got overrun with weeds last year.  He also burned the pile of cornstalks and sunflower stalks we'd made last October. 

After dinner, he went out into the field, scooped up the still warm pile of coals with the loader bucket of the tractor, and brought them up behind the Target Mound (a big hill of dirt he made several years ago for a shooting backstop where we sight in our guns).  Using those coals from the night before's fire, he started up a smaller campfire for Saturday evening.  Recycling at it's finest!

We roasted marshmallows, ate s'mores, and relaxed, loving the life at this little place here.