burn piles

At ECFE yesterday (the weekly parent-child preschool we go to) the kids got to finger paint with orange, yellow and red and then glue logs on top to make camp fires. After class, Ivar's teacher told me that Ivar was the most enthusiastic about the project and told his friends, "I'm going to give this to my dad! He loves burn piles! He does a burn pile like every day!"

Oh this made me laugh. We actually have only had two burn piles this week, but we also burned down the rest of the barn (we'll call that one very large burn pile), so there have been quite a few "camp fires" at the grovestead lately.

It certainly makes for some exciting days for little boys and little girls watching their dad use a chainsaw, watching trees falling over, getting tractor rides and seeing big fires (of course they are always a good distance away from all of these dangerous things!) We are clearing out a lot of undergrowth under our oak trees. A year ago we had a guy from the DNR come out here and tell us that our grove is actually an Oak Savannah and if wild fires came through every so often like historically they would have, all of the undergrowth would burn off, leaving only the oaks, as they can survive wildfires (your fun fact for the day!) 

In decades past, the people who lived here either had pigs or goats that kept the undergrowth at bay. Neighbors have told us they used to gallop their horses through our groves, they were literally that wide open. Now it has been so long since the previous owner had goats that we can hardly walk back into these groves. So we're going in there with a chain saw, a tractor and ultimately our own wild fire (Rory's burn piles) and taking back the Oak Savannah.