Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

In addition to all that I want to do this week, I have been tending backyard fires. As a part time lumberjack I used to "save time" by bringing home trailer loads of tree debris, then burning it. Once we got annexed into city limits it became unlawful to have open brush fires in one's yard. Yet, I still have a big pile of debris...and I don't intend to take it up to the street twig by twig for city collection.

Walk around any home store and you will see that there is a proliferation of backyard conversational fire pits. All shapes and sizes, including chimineas. I figure that if THOSE are ok, then I should be able to do a small fire or two, completely enclosed in a "portable" fire pit constructed of dry laid bricks or granite stones. So I set up two burning areas in the backyard...one surrounding a stump I would like to burn out.

Every now and then I make a fire and burn off some debris. Since the weather is nicer I have recently kept a fire going as much as possible. Last night I made a visible dent in the mound of debris. And I have since decided that the 40 minutes I used to save by not hauling a trailer load of tree debris to the appropriate landfill is not worth it. It takes MANY more hours to tend a fire to burn off that debris.

When I am done I will have reclaimed a nice large open area which I can keep mowed down and will be a good place to put my van and trailers. I may keep a fire pit set up for burning off debris that I collect in my own yard.