Wow.  I never thought I could get so much work done on a Tuesday night.  After drinking a few cups of our Sumatran coffee, and a pair of chocolate chip cookies from the Mennonites next to us at the farmers market, I found myself alone for the night with the wife and kid at an ‘away’ swim meet.

A bike ride, watch a movie, play some loud guitar?  Nope, off to the farm to weed the veggie gardens.  No one would complain that I was gone for the evening.  Then it hit me.  I had a pile of cardboard at the house that could be kindling.

So, a fire start in the new burn pit.  When we had rented the skid loader, I gained a large amount of dirt from next to the barn.  It was a sloped spot that I flattened into a terrace, and lined on 3 sides with concrete from the rubble pile.  I started tossing in a few sections of barn.  Since it was a larger area than the original burn pit, I was able to alternate sides and keep a bigger, but lower, fire all night.  And the best part was, it was within tossing distance of the barn itself.  Let me tell ya, it burned full bore.  I never saw ‘white-hot’ before now.
I alternated sides of the pit to feed.  When full, I would go pull grass from around our small corn and sunflower patch that we’ve been trying the last two years.  The grass and thistle comes up faster when you till a section.  The good news is that there is a lot of corn and sunflowers starting to grow faster than the grass for once.  I think I gave it fighting chance.  Every now and then I would go toss another hunk of barn on the pile then go find some more nearly lost vegetables.

Actually, the barn pile started to disappear for once.  I found ground not seen in a year.  There is plenty to go, but this was progress.  In 3 hours I burned more than I usually managed to burn all day last year.  Finally at 8:30, I stopped adding wood to the fire and started kicking back the edges.  It took another hour to wind down enough for me to bury and water.

As the fire burned out, the fire-files/lightning bugs took over.  The huge field south of our place lit up, as if there was a green ember on nearly every stalk of corn out there.  You would have thought I set the field on fire, but green flashes came from every spot I could see.  I watched in amazement.  No other field seemed to match the intensity on the way home.

Cleanup, progress, amazement all in a single evening?  Our farm is fun.