Bolt Hole clean-up.

I drove up to the Bolt Hole on Saturday morning. A gorgeous day with the sun shinning brightly and nary a cloud in the sky. Of course the temperatures were still pretty low (high of 36 on Saturday and 34 on Sunday) but with the sun shinning it felt a good deal warmer.

The goal was to burn, baby burn! Mark and I had several huge piles of brush accumulated from the clearing of the apples. Honeysuckle, Scotch pine, poplar and even some scraggly cherry trees had been trimmed or felled to open up the old apple orchard during phases 1 and 2. With the snow still up to two feet deep, this is the ideal time to torch this stuff. There's little need to worry about the fire spreading through the grass or into the scrub nearby and all the water you need to control the beast is a shovel full away. So, with permit obtained from the forest rangers (and personally delivered to our door!) and phone call to the local fire department to alert them to our intentions, that is exactly what we did on Sunday.

Sunday morning was overcast with some snow flurries but very little wind. The morning temperature was in the 20s which helped firm up the snow and make walking on the surface possible. The option, sinking knee deep at times or wearing snowshoes, was not conducive to working from 8 AM until after 6 PM. Mark started the fire using an old gallon of gas that had nearly become sludge to soak some rags which were then thrust into the pile of debris. It took some doing because everything was frozen but the brush caught and things went pretty smoothly after that.

Temperatures only ran up into the mid 30s once the sun came out but with the work and the fire to keep us warm, it was a chore NOT to get sweaty.

As the fire burned, we trimmed some of the apple trees that had grown leggy under the Scotch pines and then Mark felled some of the pines as well to increase the air circulation and sunlight reaching the apple trees. That slash got dragged tot he fire and fed the flames.

There was no danger of the fire spreading. As it burned it created a pit a foot or more deep in the frozen soil so that the fire was contained in a circle of snow and ice that was, in spots almost three feet deep. The edges of the brush pile didn't even burn because of being encased in ice.

We wanted to drag some stuff from some smaller brush piles but were foiled by the snow and ice that locked the branches in place. Even using a pair of loppers to free the tips proved futile as there were always more under the branch that were frozen solid.

Things did get a bit more difficult as the sun came out around noon and started to soften the snow. You had to watch were you walked or end up going knee deep when you least expected to. Trust me on this, having one foot suddenly go south on you can really put a strain on your thighs and back.

This morning (Monday) I'll be packing up and heading back to PA. But along the way, I'll make a stop at the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge. This will be something of a scouting trip as I've never been there before. My birding buddy, Gary, and I will be heading back there on Wednesday if there are any interesting birds about. He's never been there either.