Burning
Part of good land stewardship means doing the sorts of things that mother nature used to do until mankind put up barriers to prevent it from happening, in this case, setting fire to the land. In plots of prairie, native prairie grasses send roots down upwards of ten feet deep providing the black nutrient rich soil this part of the world is known for. But in the spring, cool season weeds can come up earlier and crowd out the native grasses with shade and if left that way, will eventually take over any given plot of prairie. Mother nature solved this problem by sending fires to sweep across the prairies but mankind put a stop to this by building homes and towns out there and getting upset when mother nature burnt them up. So every year on the farm, we try to burn approximately half of our patches of prairie by artificially setting them on fire in a controlled manner that we can control them. In the picture above you can see on the far right the first line of defense, a plowed strip...