Kansas pasture burn

[ChiefBroom]

I helped a friend burn pasture yesterday on a place that has been in his family in Northeast, Missouri since the early 1850s. A horse trade involving Jessie James was transacted in a barn on adjacent property owned by a cousin of his. It's a fun but at times intense way to spend a day. I don't know if anyone will find these interesting, but I thought I'd post a few photos of the last burn we did on 160 acres of old family farm I own in North Central Kansas.

These were taken with an iPhone. Too bad someone with better skills wasn't there to capture the event.

 

[Mick]

Nice. Phones work ok for web pics and such.

Thanks for taking the photos and sharing with us.

 

[Cynomys]

Very nice photos. I would not have expected so good from an iPhone.

Now, could you explain for us lifelong city dwellers why the pastures are burned off and how the fires are controlled/contained?.

 

[Blooze]

Reminds me of home (SW KS). Although I don't remember burning any pasture ground on purpose (usually too dry to attempt it), but we fought a lot of fires caused by lightning strikes.

 

[ChiefBroom]

Very nice photos. I would not have expected so good from an iPhone.

Now, could you explain for us lifelong city dwellers why the pastures are burned off and how the fires are controlled/contained?.

Thanks. I'm actually a city-dweller too (Kansas City), but this piece of ground was part of a farm originally homesteaded by my 3x great-grandfather in 1874. I got a horse for my 6th birthday, a rifle for my 8th Christmas, and grew up with the place as my playground. My dad's ashes are spread on it. So it has very special meaning to me, and I keep it for sentimental reasons that I hope to pass along to my two kids (25 and 22).

Here's a link to a pretty good discussion in response to the question: "Why do we burn the prairie?" And here's another one.

The ground in this quarter-section (1/4 of a square mile) wasn't broken with a plow until the mid-1950s (I think 1954). It really isn't well-suited to cultivation without terracing to mitigate erosion. My dad put it into a federal conservation program back in the 80s, the broad objective of which was, and remains, to restore such land to some rough approximation of its natural state. Conditions are imposed regarding planting and maintenance. My goal is to optimize habitat for diverse wildlife, and I invest more for the sake of that purpose than contractually required.

As to how a burn is controlled/contained, I should probably say first that most are, but some aren't. We did the burn in the photos last April when, as a result of uncooperative weather, I'd been pushed up against a contractual deadline to get the thing done. Over the two previous weekends a cousin and I had mowed and raked around the perimeters to reduce available fuel. We also disked some areas (e.g., along tree-lines; see photo 5) to serve as firebreaks.

Critical to effective control is back-burning. Photo 1 shows the first back-burn line just as it was being lit at sunrise. The wind that morning was predominantly out of the south. So in photo 1 the wind was blowing from right (south) to left (north). A dirt road bounds the field several yards (maybe 6-8) to the left (north) of the line (i.e., on the other side of the utility poles running parallel to it in photo 1). We tended the line with rakes and had an ATV carrying a water tank with spray attachment that was used to run back and forth along the line hitting ornery hot spots. This is challenging work because you have to work in front of the fire with the smoke and heat blowing directly into your face. Once the fire moves a short distance into the wind, however, the risk of a down-wind break-out is substantially reduced by the removal of fuel. What subsequently requires attention on the downwind side are blowing embers and directional changes in the wind.

The BTUs generated by a fast-burning tall-grass fire are incredible. You can get some sense of this from the towering plume of smoke driven by rapidly rising air (see photo 3). This creates ground-air movement patterns, as well as high-lofting embers, that can add to the challenge of containment.

After establishing a sufficiently broad back-burn, a line of fire is lit along the upwind edge or the patch to be burned. On this particular day, the wind was brisk, and the fire ran its /14 mile distance with breathtaking speed. I mean that literally. In fact a well-fed, fast-moving fire runs ahead of itself. In photo 6 you can see combustion out-pacing the fire-line as hot air ignites grass several feet/yards downwind of it. I could barely endure the heat long enough to take this photo. Note, BTW, that in photo 6 -- which was taken in the afternoon while burning another patch in the same 1/4 section -- left is still north. The wind had clocked around 180 degrees over the course of about 3 hours in the middle of the day. This turned out to be lucky for us, as we finished burning the largest patch before the shift, which allowed us to complete two smaller patches that weren't well-situated to burn with a south wind. Some others weren't so fortunate, and several fires escaped control that day, one very destructively.

Although the fire is spell-binding, what is most amazing to me is how suddenly it extinguishes within seconds (like a blink) after building to an inferno that seeks to consume everything. Once the down-wind running fire is deprived of fuel upon reaching the slowly advancing line of the back-fire, it's like someone flipped off a light switch, and the crackling, raging, fire vanishes (also breathtaking), leaving behind a black carpet and almost perfect silence. (see photo 4, taken just after the first patch was done).

Thanks again for commenting on the photos.

 

[i.am.zed]

This brings back some memories. I spent the first 25 years of my life in Kansas. I grew up in NE Kansas and I can remember many a trip traveling through the Flint Hills to my grand parents house south of Witchita during burn season. It's an incredible, and quite surreal, to experience this at night.

 

[ChiefBroom]

This brings back some memories. I spent the first 25 years of my life in Kansas. I grew up in NE Kansas and I can remember many a trip traveling through the Flint Hills to my grand parents house south of Witchita during burn season. It's an incredible, and quite surreal, to experience this at night.

And your post brought back one for me. Several years go when my son was in high school, he chose as his main project for a photography class to do a black and white, night shoot of pasture fires. We'd spot what promised to be a good one glowing in the distance (maybe 10-20 miles) and head for it. "Surreal" is a good word, especially when you catch sight of something like a horse and cowboy-hatted rider in silhouette against a backdrop of flames and glowing smoke.

 

[knlgskr]

Reminds me of home (SW KS). Although I don't remember burning any pasture ground on purpose (usually too dry to attempt it), but we fought a lot of fires caused by lightning strikes.

This brings back some memories. I spent the first 25 years of my life in Kansas. I grew up in NE Kansas and I can remember many a trip traveling through the Flint Hills to my grand parents house south of Witchita during burn season. It's an incredible, and quite surreal, to experience this at night.

And your post brought back one for me. Several years go when my son was in high school, he chose as his main project for a photography class to do a black and white, night shoot of pasture fires. We'd spot what promised to be a good one glowing in the distance (maybe 10-20 miles) and head for it. "Surreal" is a good word, especially when you catch sight of something like a horse and cowboy-hatted rider in silhouette against a backdrop of flames and glowing smoke.

Spent about 20 years on a farm in Marion Co., KS; went to college in Emporia, Lyon Co., KS., in the Flint Hills; beautiful country especially in the Spring. Breaking the sod to the plow exposed the sandy topsoil to the Kansas winds which may have been a mistake; perhaps one day Kansas may go back to the days when the Buffalo/Bison roamed but seriously doubt it and if/when on only a limited scale.

 

[Cynomys]

Thank you very much for your detailed response to my question about the reasons for burning the prairie and how the fires are controlled.

Also, very nice story about how this land came into your life and why it means so much to you.

 

[celestino]

Thanks for sharing the photos, Ken!