The forecast was rain early in the morning, then by noon sun with a high temperature in the low 60s F. The forecasters were wrong again. It didn't start to rain till 10 am. Then only 0.02 of an inch. No sun all day: very overcast. Whenever I looked the temperature was 44 F. Apparently I didn't keep a constant watch on the temperature gauge as the high temperature apparently reached 56 F. And the wind blew in the afternoon making it feel colder than it looked, and it looked cold. Yesterday 72 F and so warm I didn't wear a shirt. Today I wore a flannel shirt and coat when I was outside. What a difference a day makes!
Consequently I didn't go outside much. I fed the cattle of course. Late afternoon I decided to check on my tree stumps and pocket gopher traps. I caught two more pocket gophers. I have only one trap left in the hayfield, and that trap had dirt so I know there is one more pocket gopher left to trap. I easily found places to set my other traps in the south pasture.
As for my tree stumps, only a few were smoldering.
North pasture: (4)
- the small one that smoldered from day 1 was still smoldering.
- the "spider" stump is not smoldering, but the three "legs" are small. Later I will cut them and remove the stump.
- the two larger stumps are now fairly small, and kinda smoldering. The pickup load of grass, and third attempt to set the stump to burning, seems to have really worked on reducing their sizes. One more burn will finish the stumps off. All side roots are smoking holes in the ground.
- two along the fence: one is burnt, the other is mostly burnt
- of the eight others: two are burnt, four are mostly burnt and only need one more burn, the final two are smaller but need more burning.
- I forgot to check on the six rotted stumps I had set on fire using grass at the very beginning.
- one is burnt and done
- 2 are smoldering quite intensely. I am not sure if these stumps are from pine trees as their grain and coloration is different that pine tree stumps.
- 4 are much smaller and only need one more burn to finish them off
One reason some stumps don't completely burn is that they are damp inside. One stump that I partially burnt the past three years, then dug the dirt away from last summer to air dry, was wet today when I poked and chipped at it. It was half the size from yesterday, but very wet nonetheless under the blackened surface. This stump is in the shade of other trees much of the day so that may explain why a summer of air drying didn't completely dry the stump.
Other stumps are a mixture of wood and dirt which slows and stops some fires. I chip the now exposed dirt away before reburning them.
I found a couple of small chewed-up orange balls of twine today along the fence so I removed the rest of the old baling twine from the corral fence by the barn. One less thing for the cattle to chew on.
I noticed my new wooden corral fence is sturdy. One big heifer, after eating the fresh hay I set out, wanted green grass as dessert. She turned her head sideways and got it through the fence, then leaned and leaned to eat all the green grass she could reach sliding her head until she got to the next fence post. She would withdraw her head then put her head through the fence again on the other side of the post. I could see her lean hard against the fence, and it held. *whew*
Here is a photo from a couple years ago of one of my tree stumps burning to give you an idea of what it is like. (I need to get a digital camera so you can see photos from this year.) If I remember right it took at least several more burnings after this one to completely get rid of the stump, and be left with a hole in the ground. The exposed dirt up-and-left of the fire is the remains of a stump I had finished burning the previous year. I had gotten dirt to fill in that hole.
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