CRP Fire

 June 10th my father and I were trying to get in the final day of fixing fences prior to cows going to summer pasture completed.  We gathered fencing supplies and loaded up the Ol' Blue pickup, a 1979 Ford that my dad purchased new back in '79 and is still going.  As we took off and turned west, cresting the cemetery hill we could see a broad pillar of smoke billowing ahead of us. We decided to detour and head that to check it out.  Maybe someone was simply doing a trash burn or something.  But as we got closer it always seemed to be the next mile off and was growing in size. We reached a mile north of our own pasture called the West Pasture. We got in line behind a few other trucks we see we joined a gathering of ranchers who had the same idea to check it out.  We got out and chatted with a few; one stated he called it in already to the fire department, but they were having trouble getting out to it.  My dad and I continued on and parked in front of our West Pasture gate and could see that the smoke seemed to be coming from just the other side of our land.  I was getting a little nervous as it more or less seemed like our pasture was downwind from the smoke where we have 60 or so cows and calves. We unloaded our 4-wheeler and both hopped on and drove across the 320 acre ground. 

As we approached the west end we could see fire trucks and a tractor with a disk driving along the east edge of the CRP ground that neighbors our pasture.  We paused at the windmill, hoping maybe we could fire it up, but found that the stick was broken and needed replaced.  I climbed up maybe 3/4 of the way up and took a video: 

We then moved along the edge of the field and chatted with a couple firemen we were having a little transmission trouble with their vehicle, but they got going.  Upon surveying the fire damage it seemed to have burned nearly all of the CRP pasture with its thick foliage, but the departments were able to get ahead of it and disked up along our fence line to contain the spread further.  


We were very grateful for the departments: O'Neill and Chambers for sure, possibly some others, as well as employers of firemen for letting them leave work and come and keep the fire contained.  I've become a big proponent of disking for fire control where its possible, and less a fan of the CRP land use program in general, but I'm open for persuasion.    

A day or two later we learned the fire was start due to a military flight exercise with a flare.   Thankful it was kept from spreading and we and others didn't have to move cattle or have homes endangered.  The Lord is good. 

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