We purchased 9 acres that was previously part of a 15 acre tract. The front of the property had a nice pipe fence on it, but it extended past our side boundary line and there was not a gate to get to our property. There was a gate located just past our side boundary line. The gate originally provided access to the original 15 acre tract and now only gave access to the remaining 6 acres that we did not purchase. We knew that we needed to have a gate installed in the pipe fence and we needed a new barbed wire fence running along the side boundary. We also had some wooded areas that we wanted to have thinned out. We proceeded to get names of fence contractors and clearing contractors. I felt a little bit like Mr. Douglas from the old Green Acres t.v. show. We asked the Realtor that was involved with our purchase if she knew any quality contractors and she provided us with some names. It became very apparent that the contractors did not rely on the internet to create business, so we had to rely on getting names from people who had knowledge of potential contractors. We also found someone to mow our pastures. He also provided names of fence and clearing contractors. It was surprising how much price difference there was in the quotes we were given. It was evident that we should always get multiple bids. After reviewing the bids, we chose our contractors and within a few weeks we had our new gate, barbed wire fence and the tree thinning was completed.
I purchased a gas chain saw for me and a small cordless electric chain saw for Debbie. We began doing additional thinning of wooded areas on the weekends.
We soon had two enormous piles of trees, brush and limbs. I had originally looked into having this material hauled off, but the locals and contractors all indicated that we just needed to do a “burn”. Wholly Molley, that placed a little fear in my heart to have large fires on our new land.
I called the county fire department and they said that I should do the burn on a day that had little or no wind and preferably after a light rain. They also requested that I contact the county Sheriff’s department when I started the burn. I found a website that tracked and forecasted wind speed and direction, which helped me decide when the time was right to start the burn. I asked two of my sons, Bryan and Chris, to help tend the fires. Chris brought his girlfriend, Naomi. After we contacted the Sheriff’s department, we started each burn pile at different times so we were not watching two blazes at once. We let the first fire die down before we started the second fire. We used diesel fuel to start the burn because it does not flare up like gasoline.
Before the day was over, the burn piles were burned to the ground and our first burn was a success.
