Sayonara, Slash!



This pile had flames around 20' high, which is not uncommon. We burned 91 piles like this in March-April. 

Pruning trees reduces fire risk. The limbs become slash on the ground. Slash becomes piles. Piles become fire.

Firewise practices include reducing "ladder fuels" by pruning trees up above the level of a ground fire Through the NRCS EQIP program we're pruning trees up to 16 feet.

Some debris can stay on the ground to rot and return nutrients to the soil. Too much debris is a fire risk. To reduce that risk, some of the wood can be piled to be burned when the ground is wet or snow-covered.

We do a combination of practices, piling small-diameter limbs and tops, leaving wood larger than 4" diameter as ground wood.

The amount of pruning waste is impressive. The lower limbs of one mature tree produces enough slash to make a pile 4' x 6' and 3' or 4' high. Most piles are 4x6x8' and include the bucked stems of small trees removed during understory thinning.

We come back around in early March, when there's still snow on the ground, and torch the piles. A propane flame thrower works efficiently.

We burned 91 piles in the spring of 2011, and it's a lot of work. Usually we had 2-3 people working their own areas. We worked 4 weekends this spring, actively tending fires for most of the day.


Working my way across a slope I lit the pile in the far distance, then the nearer piles, and I'm waiting for this pile to grow to its maximum size before I move on to the piles upwind of me on this slope.



We torch one pile at a time per person, and tend that pile until its flames subside. That can take 10 minutes, or 45 minutes, depending on the pile.

Then we move on to another pile. Throughout the day we circle back to all piles and "throw in the bones" that have escaped the flames. We use a "fire rake" for this, but a stiff yard rake or hoe is sufficient. As the ground dries we start carrying a water pack with a sprayer.

That's it 'til fall. It's now too dry to do this -- the fire crawls across the slope through the duff, creating more work for us just to contain the spreading fire.

Counting old-growth tree rings

A healthy Ponderosa Pine blew down this winter. We cut the log loose from its stump and saw some interesting ring patterns we hadn't noticed in other trees. There were long periods of drought when the tree was young, but no apparent fire damage. That puzzled us.


This tree had rings so tight at times it required a magnifier to count them.

We decided to count the rings. We fetched a magnifier, marker and push-pins, and started at the outermost ring.

When this tree was alive it was leaning, slightly bent, not very tall or large, probably of no commercial value -- that's what saved it from the saw over the decades, even when this canyon was last logged in the 1970s.

The tree turned out to be approximately 170 years old. That means it sprouted in about 1841. In that year Lieutenant Charles F. Wilkes led a U.S. Naval expedition of the Pacific Northwest. Oregon was not yet an organized territory. A group of pioneers led by John Bidwell set off on the Oregon Trail, sparking the Great Migration. The Homestead Act and the American Civil War were still 20 years away. WA became a state in 1889, when this tree was almost 50 years old.

This was an attractive tree, one that we left even though it shaded our solar array for an hour on winter days. It had the characteristic reddish bark found only on certain old PPs. Its slant and curve gave it a Bonsai look. It stood in the open, one of two pines on a minor ridge.

This relatively small Ponderosa Pine was about 170 years old. It sprouted before the Civil War.

Its rings tell a story of survival. It lived through at least two major droughts of a decade or longer -- one in the 1920s, when we believe a forest fire swept across this canyon. Embedded knots terminate about that time, perhaps burned off by a passing ground fire that otherwise spared this tree. The other major drought was in the 1950s.

When the stump dries out I want to cut a slab from it and get it over to our friend Dick S., who is an expert on forest fire ecology in our region. Maybe he can pinpoint the precise year of the fire.

Field Trip!

Summer's approaching and it's time to plan ahead for forest field trips. The ones I've attended have been very informative on many levels. I heard from knowledgable people about forestry, botany, wildlife etc. I met people with properties like mine. And I saw how other people maintain their stands. Plus it's a day off from logging, skidding, or whatever else is on my to-do list that weekend.

E. WA Forest and Range Owners Field Day, June 18, 2011, White Salmon WA
Brochure & registration form, web site

Tri-State (ID-MT-WA) Forest Owners Field Day, July 9, 2011, Mullan ID
Contact Kirk David, Idaho Forest Owners Assn, 208-262-1371, kirkdavid at earthlink dot net

W. WA Forest Field Day, August 20, 2011, in Jefferson County, near Chimacum WA
web site