If you are a faithful Meridian Jacobs blog reader you may remember my attempts last fall to get the sheep to eat and/or trample the shoulder high dallas grass. Dallas grass is a late summer perennial that takes over the pasture. There is so much thick dead grass that nothing grows under it.In this photo see the little bit of green with all that dead grass that takes over the field. (That’s a hay field in the background.)
My oldest son is a firefighter for the U.S. Forst Service and I talked him into burning the fields for me.
These are my two sons. Chris is lighting the fire here–he will be working on a hotshot crew this summer after graduation.
This is oldest son, Matt, and his friend, David. Matt is lighting the fire and David is hosing down the fiberglass posts to keep them from melting.
As the fire crew (also included my brother and a friend of Chris) was working I was working with a previously scheduled class. Talk about double-booking. In the shop we were winding warp, warping looms, etc and I made a couple of quick trips out with the camera. Some of the class participants enjoyed the time spent in the barn watching lambs. The last 3 people here were treated to watching a lamb being born. However this was more interactive than observation as the lamb turned out to be a huge ram–over 12 lbs! Thanks to Chris for helping and getting her hands slimey (but not spotting her white shirt!).
Chris also stayed to help me get the electric fence back up so I could put the sheep out on the pasture. Unfortunately some of the insulators at the south end of the pasture were melted by the fire and the wire broke (burned?) So I need to do some fence repair in the morning.
More photos tomorrow to show the results of the burn.
