Spring is the traditional time for cleaning up yards, and I have been doing some of that , but beyond just cleaning up the landscape, I am also trying to do things that will lessen the chance of fire on our property.
In the area between the road and our house, we have a patch of delicious spearmint that we use in the summer for our ice tea. After its growing season is over, the mint turn into stiff dead stems that are about a foot (30 cm) high. I always just left them there, to be overtaken by the newly growing spearmint plants that come up in the summer, but I figured all of those tall dead weeds would burn rapidly if a fire would start, so yesterday I got out my lawn trimmer and cut them down, raked them up, and then put them on the compost pile to decompose.
Another fire prevention action I took was to saw down two young healthy spruce trees growing in a grove of deciduous trees, between my barn and the road. I really hate to cut down healthy trees, but conifers are more apt to burn than deciduous trees.
In the past I would put tree debris onto a couple of piles to rot, but I have been taking off so many branches, that those piles are now too big, so I have been having to haul the branches to the dump. Below is a trailer full of the cut off branches.
I guess you can tell that the unusually dry and warm weather we have been experiencing for a year, has gotten me spooked about what might happen this summer, as far as the likelihood of forest fires. There is a lot of regular maintenance that needs to be done around here, but right now, fire abatement is my main concern.
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