(written on the 10th)
Oh boy.
Today was interesting. 😅
I spent a good while in the morning working on JustAnswer stuff, as per normal lately. It’s been a new goal of mine to answer at least 15 questions before I do anything else
After doing my morning questions, I decided to spend some time burning the rest of the lower field by the greenhouse. It seems like a great time to do the burn, because the wind was just gently blowing, and it was actually starting to sprinkle just a tiny bit.
So I let it on fire, and it started blowing toward the fence line, which wasn’t a problem because that me would be a good back burn. Normally, I wait for the fire to get right up to the fence line, and then I put it out with my shoe.
I tried to get it close to the fence line, because the fence line is off and one of the worst places for a buildup of weeds.
Well, as I was burning stuff, the wind completely switched directions, burning it back the other direction, catching some bigger Weeds on fire and jumping the fence. By the time I ran all the way around the fence to get that little bit of fire out (barbed wire fence, not so fun to climb), the fire had gotten bigger than I could put out with my foot.
😅
Again, that’s actually normally not a problem. That happens on a regular basis. The wind will gust up for maybe 30 or 60 seconds, and you get really really big flames for a little bit, and then it dies down and all the fires die down to about knee or waist high, and then you just come from behind and put them out with your shoe.
No biggie.
Except that by the time the fire died down, it had entered a wild blackberry patch.
(If you’re not familiar with arkansas, then just know that blackberry vines are weeds out here and they grow freaking everywhere.)
I was in shorts.
I called my brother Jim to see if he was around, to see if he could help, but he was in Rogers.
I thought maybe I could still get it, if the wind would die down. I jumped into the blackberry vines, trying to put out the fire before it reached the tree line, tearing my legs up pretty good on the thorns, but it was no use. I was going to be complete hamburger if I kept it up.
Jim told me that Landon was almost home, and suggested I go get my skid steer to help put out the flames where the blackberry bushes were.
I didn’t want to leave the fire because the efforts I was making to put it out were what was keeping it even relatively under control, , but I couldn’t keep fighting against the blackberries, and my legs were getting cooked.
So I ran over to my van, drove up to my skid steer in the upper pasture, and hight-tailed it back.
By the time I got back, Landon was home and he and three or four others were out there trying to get the fire under control.
#Teamwork
That was a crazy-fast response. I couldn’t have been gone for more than 5 minutes.
Props to the fam!
Just in the amount of time that I have been gone, without my steady efforts to tamp it down, even though I was slowly getting further and further behind, the fire head ballooned out of control and was already into the trees.
🔥🔥🔥😶🔥🔥🔥
With the skid steer, I was able to quickly put out the leading fire lines that were still in the field. Had I had my skid steer ready to start with, it never would have been an emergency in the first place.
With the fire in the woods, though, there wasn’t any realistic way of getting the skid steer over the fence. Fortunately, with the fire in the woods, there weren’t a lot of dead weeds to burn, because the canopy keeps the weeds down.
The main thing to worry about in the woods was all the dead fall and the rotten trees still vertical.
The rotten trees were catching on fire and smoldering as high as probably 20 ft off the ground, and the deadfall was catching on fire and just sort of smoldering.
It took a good while, but eventually, we were able to get all of the fire out. Mike chops down two dead trees that were smoldering, and we filled buckets to Dallas the big dead tree.
It took a long time, and appropriately, I was the last one to stay to make sure the leaves in the woods didn’t catch on fire.
Grateful for all the help.
And my pride was a little hurt because I always want everyone to think well of me, and I hate messing up.
So many things I could have done differently to have prevented the fire from getting out of control.
I could have stopped the fire before it got so close to the fence, then there would have been no risk of me having to jump the fence to get on the other side to put it out. That lost time was a big deal in all the events that unfolded.
It’s also pretty eye-opening how quickly the wind can make the fire unfightable.
Even coming in behind it, the sender’s on the grounds, even just from a weed fire, are so hot my legs were burning standing in the coals of just the weeds and what little there was of small branches that had burned.
Definitely eye-opening.
So I stayed with a fire good long time, and once I was satisfied that everything was out, no more smoke coming from any little hot spots, I called it good.
Since I was already on the hill, and since one of the pieces of equipment we could have used to help put out the fire was out of commission because it had a tire that was popped off the bead, and had been sitting that way for months, I decided I would try and get it fixed for my hill family.
Everybody is so swamped all the time…
So I jacked up the tractor, tried to fill up the tire by using the fuel vapor fumes method, but that was no good, just catching the tire on fire and having to put it out.
It was then that I realized there was also hydraulic fluid all over the place.
😶
Gratefully my little fire attempt hadn’t caught the hydraulic fluid on fire, as I might well have burned down the tractor.
The tractor I guess had been left with the bucket holding up the front end because the plan had been to get the tire fixed, but then it sat that way for ages and ages with all the pressure on the seals, so fluid leaked past the seals, all over the wheel, all over the ground, all over the bucket… It was everywhere.
So I rolled the tire away from the tractor over toward the shop, started grabbing some ratchet straps to try and ratchet the tire down to set the bead, but it was no use. I tried and tried and tried, but it wouldn’t even come close to setting.
Jim got home about that time, and I asked for his help, and we spent probably the next hour plus with ratchet straps and grease and all sorts of different things trying to get the bead to seal, finally succeeding after tons and tons and tons of effort.
Jim couldn’t get the tractor to start, so he put it on the charger after we blew through all the power of my jump box had to offer.
Since I already had all my tools out, I decided change the battery I had in my van. It always lasts overnight, but if I do any sort of charging for more than like 10 minutes, then it’s dead and won’t start without a jump. After having jumped it a gazillion times, I finally decided it was the right time to swap the battery out for the one that I have been carrying for a good long time.
But of course, with everything going sideways today what would happen but the battery would be reverse polarity posts.
Which means my cables wouldn’t reach.
🙄
So I spent probably 10 or 15 minutes finding a way to force the cables to reach, which eventually ended up successful.
Except that when I went to start the van, it was as dead as a doornail.
😠
Sideways.
Fortunately, I had my other jump box with enough charge to start the van.
I’m grateful for the redundancies that I have with my stuff.
So after that ordeal, I headed into Pea Ridge to drown my sorrows at Wendy’s and try and get some online stuff done.
I bought that little $3 year long pass for free Junior frosties, so I’ve been getting free Junior frosty’s each time I go, and I think a couple of times they’ve given me the small frosty instead of the junior, which is very nice. 😁
Comfort food 😅
Unlike the norm with me where I give up my vices cold turkey and do just fine, it’s been a lot slower going, as I guess I think I’ve already mentioned. I’m improving in some areas but still way off in others.
After getting dinner at Wendy’s, I headed over to my mom’s place to help her get the battery in Happy changed (the BMW Z3).
Which… added more sideways events.
After swapping out the battery, since it’s a bmw, I went to get my scanner to check to see if I needed to do a battery monitoring system reset like most BMWs need, but my scanner, which the last two times I had checked it, including recently I had thought, was better than dead.
😡
Just one of those days I guess.
I suppose I should learn that when days start going sideways, you might as well just take the rest of the day off. 😅
It was similar, as I remember, with my mechanic work. If the first two jobs went sideways, it was more likely than not that the rest of the day was going to go sideways.
That caused all sorts of headaches. It seems like everything I tried to do today went sideways.
[sigh]
Believe it or not, after that day, I did another late night gym visit, which was at least some success. I did skip out on the cardio, reasoning that all my effort fighting the fire was probably sufficient for the day. 😅
So I finished my workout, drove over to my new spot between the gas station and the Chinese place, vegged out in front of my phone for a little bit, and finally crashed.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 