April 18, 2024 Disking For Rain

"I am of the mind that concerning our 160-acre situation it is better to do something than do nothing to prevent, or at the very least stall, a wildfire on our tree farm ..."

 

All too reliably, forecast rain systems had avoided drought-stricken Palmville Township in 2023, and just taunted our crops. I had little reason to think these scattered showers that day would act any different.

  Disking my over-grown firebreaks on Thursday, April 11th, to help prevent the spectre of wildfire did the same thing as washing a car did long ago, for toward evening it progressively rained, sleeted, and hailed on me a quarter mile from home forcing me to take shelter in a dense windbreak of white spruce trees north of the one-room Palmville schoolhouse; I loved the irony of it: disking against the threat of wildfire and 'producing' rain.

 

   It was a partly cloudy evening. I was disking a 16-foot wide north/south firebreak between the county road ditch and a 4-row windbreak that is almost a half mile long in that section, using my old tractor and eight-foot wide tandem disk. The firebreak hadn’t been worked up for two years. I had lucked-out the last couple years, fire-wise, hoping nothing would ignite the ditch and the grass-covered separation between it and the 150 acres of trees and under-story plants --and our house, on its east side.

 

West side of the firebreak

East side of the firebreak

My 57-year old tractor and much older disk that I think is over 125 years old.

 

 

     On its tongue is a sliding adjustment device connected to a rope that the tractor driver pulls to either advance the four tandems so they sit parallel to each other (= - shaped) and not cut/dice the soil for transport to and from the field; or pulls the rope, then reverses the tractor to push the disk into this X-shaped arrangement (see above). The driver then releases the rope so the adjustment 'cog' locks into place so that when the tractor goes forward again, the disk blades cut the soil. The concrete blocks weigh the disk down to cut the soil deeper. (Yes, Woe the end of that back tandem is bent at an odd angle. I hooked a tree or rock years ago, but it still works just fine.)

 

 

        

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_harrow

     

   Roseau County and adjoining counties to its west had recently been put under a burning ban as the whole county had become a tinderbox, so my anxiety heightened. Oddly enough, though the grass upon it was dangerously dry, the soil under it was yet too sodden to allow heavy equipment on it so I had to wait until April 11th, before I could access the ditch edge and successfully disk its west side.

 

    Using such a small 8’ tandem disk, even though weighted down with 800 pounds of concrete block, the process took multiple passes to break through the sod its whole length; I had to make a U-turn at each end. Any of the neighbors who farm several thousands of acres, on three sides of our farm, could satisfactorily disk that stretch in one pass in about five minutes using a forty-foot wide disk or harrow as they are sometimes called, but wouldn’t be able to turn around at the end like I can; in this case, size does matter.

 

   I tied a backpack fire pump on my tractor, and my ATV, when I went anywhere on the farm in case a wildfire would develop in the wealth of dry grass on either side. The spots on the hood are raindrops just starting to fall.

 

   Roughly 16-feet wide after two passes, the firebreak above, is sufficient to stall a slow moving wildfire, but not a wind-driven wildfire. County roads and highways, many more feet wide, are thought to be ready-made 'firebreaks,' and are to an extent, but a windblown grassland fire can cross them too, so it's easy to think, "What's the point?"   But I am of the mind that in our forested farm situation, unlike the croplands adjoining us on three sides, it is better for me to do something, than do nothing, to prevent or at the very least stall a wildfire; a good black firebreak can offer a place for firefighters to stage a backfire or otherwise intercede a fire's direction.  

 

   So it was late in the evening before I had finished both sides of the windrow, disked around the schoolhouse, disked around the perimeter of half a quarter section (80 acres) and the two-acre Native grass plot east of school, when scattered showers burst forth from cloud formations in the distance around me. I felt an errant raindrop from afar I imagined (For it couldn't possibly start raining)— until it fell right on top of me in fat rain drops that splattered on the hood of the tractor, then became BB-sized sleet that bounced off my lap and brim of my cap, then pellets of hail that peppered me and drove me off the tractor and into the trees, laughing and hollering in sheer appreciation of something so long awaited. Of course I excitedly called the wife.

“IT'S RAINING! AND SLEETING! AND HAILING!” 

 

   She didn’t believe me.

 

https://youtu.be/E9dTbFAyO5Q