We have been discing our fire breaks, on the first 3 days of the week and burning the next 3 days, we are going to keep it up as long as this good burning weather holds up, we have burned 3500 acres so far and need to burn about 5000 acres more, any one else burning this year??? Rio7

Lots of burning down here, Blue!

Half of the controlled burns are jumping the firebreaks though.

Had one a few miles from the ranch here jump over, and it burned for more than 2 days.

Y'all be careful!

We had one fire break jump, wood rat on fire ran across the fire break and got in the high grass, burned about 5 acres before we got it shut off.

Rio7

It takes permits from the Public Health Department, the fire department and Sheriff office to burn legally here.

I can't imagine setting several hundred acres on fire and hoping to control it.
My ass would be so puckered you could slice doughnuts off of it.

I get nervous burning a small part of the garden off. If it's dry enough to burn, it will spread. If not you can't light it. Five minutes after I strike a fire, the wind always goes nuts.


Good luck to you all, I know it is how you do things, and you control it.

We will be burning 800 acres or so where I hunt, in a few weeks. Mowed low around the edge with any fluff pushed off. Then disc or chisel plow. We then have 4 to 6 people on 4 wheelers with 30 gallon tank water sprayers on them and constantly patrol the edges for any breakthroughs. This will be our 4th year and no problems yet. Unless you want to count the first year when about 1/2 doz fire departments showed up.
Even though we did have burn permits. Put a lot of smoke in the air though and the locals were just not used to that. This is pasture that has grown for 3 to 5 years and we have a regular rotation to get it all every 3 years.

After our 15,00 acre fire three years ago,anyone burning outside would about about 100 neighbors circleling, all the fire trucks in the area arrive, and probably at least 1/2 dozen sheriff cars.

Several controlled burns by Forest Service or BLM have gotten away from them. Not good

We don't just throw a match out in the high grass, we spend from a 3 day's to a week discing our fire breaks and getting ready with all our equipment , all the while watching the weather forecast, when we are ready and we have what I call 80-80-20.

Let me explain, 80 deg. or less---80% humidity---- wind less than 20 mph, we also are very aware of wind direction.

DillonBuck,When it comes to burning if you aren't scared, you aren't thinking, every time we burn it scares the Chit out of me, but we must burn to control the dead wood fuel and cover grasses, and to promote new growth.

There are 3 things ranchers and farmers don't enough of and that's BURN+BURN+BURN Rio7

Burning is better in grass and brush areas.

I'd probably burn my ranch off if I didn't have a huge oak tree population.

Not only are there 10's of thousands of oaks on my place, but thousands are down from the previous drought and the hurricane.

The ensuing fire wold spread and be epic.


Most places that burn here shred at least 60' and disk 30' before looking for the right burn conditions.

We have considered it in the past, but have decided there are better ways to go about such things.

A lot of burning around here though.

About the only burning you ever see around here is when a piece of farm equipment sets a field on fire accidently. We grow a lot of wheat here, and it's combined in June, and soybeans are planted in the wheat stubble. Occasionally, a farmer will burn the wheat stubble, but it's pretty rare unless they're trying to get rid of all the straw so they can plant a late crop of tobacco. I'd probably chit a brick if I had to burn off 100's acres of pastures

We try to burn 3500 to 5000 acres every year but some years we don' get the weather conditions we need to burn and do it right, we have a lot of native seed that won't germinate unless it's burned, if we want good habitat we need to burn, then we need rain, if it rains it makes you look like you know what your doing. Rio7

Burning crop residue is a good way to lessen the initial cost of replanting a crop.

It is a bad way to cycle the nurtients back into the ground. Yes, some of it goes into the soil, but a lot of it is lost.


Wheat stubble contains a pile of nitrogen....why would you want to burn that up? Just takes more store bought fertilizer to continue.

When you say it wont germinate unless the ground is burned, do you mean the competition is too great or the variety of seed will not sprout unless exposed to fire?

Does any fence burn with the fires?

Wabigoon, Our fire breaks are 80' and 100' wide on the fence lines. fire rarely jumps them.

Jim Conrad, We are not burning fields that are farmed, all our pastures are mixed native grasses and weeds, we are interested in habitat, for wildlife, Deer, birds, excetra, we are not grazing livestock.

Our burns are to get woody dead plants and big old grass cleaned up and to promote new growth, and to keep wildfire hazards at a minimum.

Rio7

Yes, I see.


I was just interested if there were specific plant that need fire to germinate.


Where does your wildlife shelter during the burning season?

Jim Conrad, Our Wildlife have almost unlimited free range on the rest of the ranch. Rio7

That's good.

We have so little cover up here we really have to think ahead for winter.

Even a big patch of weeds in the fall can save hundreds of birds.

The DNR here loves burning grass in spring. The smoked me out planting beans one day.

You leave the stubble and straw if you're no-tilling beans after wheat, as the wheat reside will aid in controlling weeds and conserving moisture. But, if you follow wheat with a crop like tobacco, you want the wheat residue removed in order to make a good seedbed, and also the straw tends to rob the young tobacco plants of moisture if it comes into contact with their root system.

Boy, thats one I have no idea about at all.

Is tobacco a common crop around you James?

Yes, tobacco is our number one cash crop. My county ranks in the top 3 statewide every year for the production of corn, wheat, and soybeans. But it is that evil weed tobacco that is the biggest moneymaker for those who grow it. Three kinds are grown here......burley, dark fired, and dark air cured. Burley is used in the production of cigarettes, dark fired and dark air cured are used to make snuff and chewing tobacco, with some of the better quality used for cigars.

I grew tobacco for almost 30 years, and can tell you that it's hard work as most of the work is done by hand. Up until about 20 years ago, the growing of tobacco was regulated by USDA, as they told you how much you could grow. Each farm had it's own base, and you could either grow it there, or rent it out. The tobacco was sold mostly at auction houses. Then USDA phased out their control, and now just about all of it is grown on contract to a handful of companies, with U.S Tobacco being the largest here.

The tobacco plants are started off in a greenhouse from a seed that's no bigger than the head of a pin. That's much better than when I first started raising it, because then the plants were sowed outside in what we called plantbeds, and they were very labor intensive, requiring quite a bit of labor. When the plants are about 6 inches in height and with a stem bout the size of a pencil, they are transplanted to the field. You've never farmed until you've spent hours in the sun, setting, hoeing, topping, suckering, cutting, and housing tobacco. But, if you had a good crop, and it sold well, the sweat was worth it.

Very good.

Thanks for the information. I always wondered who got to grow tobacco.


About the most labor intensive crop that was grown up here was sugar beets, years ago. The sugar plant moved and the crop became more mechanized.

Tobacco sounds like hard work!

Tobacco is hard work, that's why most all the farmers here have Mexicans doing the work. When the young plants are transplanted in the field, that is done with a tractor pulling a tobacco transplanter, usually a 2 or 4 row, with workers placing the plants into the rows. After that, most of the work is done by hand, including the harvesting. The harvested crop is then placed in curing barns, and when the plants are dried, it is taken down and a process called "striping" takes place. That means the leaves are removed from the stalk and bundled up for taking to market. Most buyers want a bundle that will weigh around 600 pounds or so.

There are easier methods of doing it these days, than what I did when I was growing it. But, it's still hard work. In the tobacco growing regions of the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia, flue-cured tobacco is grown. They use a lot more mechanization in their methods than we do in the types that are grown here.

An old family friend told me, his uncle raise his own tobacco in the garden.

When people greeted him and said, "Hi," did they really mean "High"?

Quite a few people do now. No worries about what you're smoking or chewing if you grow it.

Ed

I worked for a tobacco farmer one time just to be able to say I had done it. Cutting and racking "baccy" in the drying barns could make you hurt in places you didn't know you had. And I quit chewing while working there because you'd absorb enough sap through your hands to get more nicotine than you'd ever get from a pinch of Copenhagen.

"Tobacco is hard work, that's why most all the farmers here have Mexicans doing the work."

They have Mexicans doing the work because they can pay them less.

No, the Mexican H2A workers actually cost more than local labor would. The farmers have to furnish them housing, transportation, and guarantee them so many hours, plus you pay a certain amount of their travel expenses to and from Mexico. The plus of having the Mexicans, is that you know they're going to show up for work. The unreliability of local labor is what led to the H2A worker program

Did the original Indians use Mexicans? Seems counter to what we think we know, about learning from the Indians and hard work. miles

I didn't consider any of those extra factors. I was extrapolating from my 15 year career on the East Coast in landscaping. Guys were hiring the beans for half price.

If you could get some of the illegal Mexicans, I'm sure you could get some fairly cheap labor. But, the farmers have to go through the government run H2A program, and follow the guidelines that are set. They'd be better off of they could get local help, even if they had to pay them a few bucks more. I think they are paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 an hour, and that's above minimum wage.

Your tobacco workers are probably like apple pickers around here.
They show up when the work needs done, and everyday till its done.
They do manual labor, all day, all year. Not afraid of it, and conditioned to it.
When the work is done, it is understood that they move on.


You can hire local help that can meet some of those conditions, not all.


The big problem is getting the people that will work hard, to show up everyday.
If you do, then they aren't happy when the job is done, and you are done with them.



It amazes me the people around here who will break their backs doing any nasty job you give them.
Untill they get whatever amount of money they need, right now.
Then, you will not be able to find them, untill they need money again.

Dillonbuck,

Years ago I picked apples for a day down around York. One day..................never again. I learned a few things that day. Picking apples by oneself was a lot slower than folks working in teams. Moving that heavy ass orchard ladder around, picking the top and the bottom of old school trees was hard work. What I earned in piece work that day worked out to minimum wage at best. Families in the area made decent money (probably 2x min wage) by having more than one person on a tree, the top person didn't have to move up and down the ladder for every picking basket.

I don't harbor a grudge against anyone, Mexicans included, willing to do hard labor, having done it more than once in my lifetime.

From the sounds of it I don't want to work tobacco and I'm glad I never had to either!

We have ads in our local rural papers for farm workers, for about $10.50 to $11.75 an hour, doing way more work than I'd ever want to do for those wages. Hard to make a living on that, perhaps the H2A folks can do it if housing is provided.

Thanks to you farm folks for keeping this rural forum going. I appreciate your stories.

Geno