Pines and Fire

Your open fire cooking skills are top notch. That looks great.

I like burning old brush piles and logs to expand food plots. It seems to work better than just cutting brush to expand plots. The burned areas seem to grow well after the fire, but it isn't a huge difference.

Good topic and I’m now I’m also hungry. What are trade offs between keeping the brush piles for critters or blockades vs burning? Or is it like everything else, diversity being the key and site use being the deciding factor?

Here’s some work I did clearing trees in my main orchard. There was too much brush to let it sit.  My wife and I cut and stacked it in February and March 2017 and burned in the winter of 2018. 


There’s the larger burn pile we made from the tops of the trees I cut. 

Here’s a different burn pile at the north end of the orchard. 

The rest of the birch , evergreens and whips eventually came down. 



This was before everything got cleaned up. All of those birch are gone now. 



This is the spring of 2018 after a fall planting of winter rye and clover. 

There’s stumps and some ledge not far below the surface in areas. 

Here’s the bigger pile in fall of 2017 



The deer preferred the new clover over what was there before. 

Fall of 2018. Pile is gone.