Ash Wednesday Replay

 

Over the years, I've always heard that it is better to burn brush piles while they are somewhat green. Usually they say it is because they burn a bit slower and more completely when you have bigger pieces in it. I attempted to do just that awhile back but failed miserably when the fire wouldn't stay lit. Afterwards, I guessed that it was just because the kindling I had used to start the fire, (newspaper and a handful of dry twigs) just wasn't enough to get the surround wood dry enough to burn. I really wanted this pile gone as it is in the area of my lawn where I mow.

The suitable days to burn however disappeared, i.e. days where I had a large chunk of time to monitor the fire that wasn't extremely cold, windy or blowing directly at the houses of any of my neighbors and where we had snow cover to help prevent the fire from creeping into my nearby woods and burning my entire place down. Finally, the Wednesday after Ash Wednesday, I had an open window and the conditions were right.

This time, I took a wheelbarrow full of fully dried seasoned wood down with me to the pile and got it going. It took awhile for the fire to take off but eventually it was hot enough to dry out the surrounding wood and then consume it. I kept going down every hour or so to push things toward the center of the fire since it was still green enough the fire didn't want to creep out to the periphery of the pile. Eventually I got it down to just a small pile of embers and mostly burnt up logs you see below before calling it a day.

This was only one of two piles I have from the derecho debris and I still have another pile yet to create from another tree I haven't even started cutting up. But the remaining pile and the tree yet to be cut up are both in non-maintained portions of my lawn so there really isn't any hurry to do them. Also based upon this experience of burning somewhat green wood, I think it is probably better to burn the piles when they are more dry. It burns hotter and so one has to be prepared so it doesn't escape, but I think I would spend less time pushing things into the center to be consumed. So I will probably let the other pile cure over the summer and burn it sometime next winter. By then, I should have the other  tree taken care of as well.