She keeps the home fire burnin’

News travels fast around these parts, so I’ll tell you my version of events hopefully before you hear it through the grapevine…

You see, here on the farm, there is no weekly garbage pick-up, or a dumpster, or a recycling service.  So, we separate our garbage as follows:

There is a food-and-other-wet-waste container that we occasionally empty out in the woods, because, go figure, wet items do not make very good fires.  We have another container for aluminum and glass that we haul into town to recycle. Other dry, combustible waste is periodically burned in metal barrels.

(FYI, diapers do not burn, but we haven’t quite figured out a good way to get rid of these…)

Well, being the “well-trained” farmwife that I am, I decided to burn garbage the other day.  My first mistake was doing this at the tail end of a “burn ban.”  A burn ban is a localized restriction on certain controlled fires during dry weather when fires can easily spread.  Can you see where this story is going?

My second mistake was deciding to burn a big, cardboard box that was too big to fit into a burn barrel.  Instead, I laid the box on the ground NEXT to the barrels.  Oh boy.

My third mistake occurred when I walked away and left the fire unattended.  Yeesh.

An hour later, I noticed that my “small” fire had spread across a 30’x50’ area in the woods towards the back of our yard.  That’s when I decided I should probably call my husband and ask if I should be worried…

My father-in-law and husband immediately left the field and came to help put out the fire with shovels and buckets of water until it was under control.  Unfortunately, instead of returning to his fieldwork, my husband had to stick around and monitor the fire to keep it from spreading. 

He checked on it throughout the day and into the night.  But, as I have learned, fire can do crazy things, and by morning it had traveled further across into the entire wooded area. 

That was 2.5 days ago, and it is STILL smoldering as I write this.  The dry conditions and 40-50 mph winds are not helping.

My husband has not been able to leave the yard or get a good night’s sleep for 2.5 days. That equals 2.5 days of missed work.  If there has ever been a time to pray for rain, this is it.

Remember this bunkhouse that I blogged about just a few days ago? Well, we almost lost it.  Look to the right of the house...

See this pile of ashes?  That is where my husband's pile of firewood used to reside.  The one he spent three days chopping...  The firewood that he uses to heat the shop in the winter...  Should I tell him, "Honey, you were going to burn that anyways, right!?!"  BIG oops! 

Why didn't we call the fire department, you ask?  Well, we don't want our names in the county paper, because THAT would be embarrassing!  Almost as embarrassing as the cloud of smoke coming from our yard that I can see from the highway 4 miles away!  haha.  (Sorry, I'm only half-laughing.)  My only saving grace is knowing that I am not the only person who has experienced a situation similar to this.

I feel very remorseful and am fully expecting to not live this one down for a very long time.  I learned my lesson, and luckily, it didn't have much worse consequences.  Something tells me this will not be the last "desperate farmwife" story that I end up sharing with you.  That's what happens when you put a city girl on the farm.  :s