I spent Saturday morning piling up dead manzanita from the yard, forming 3 piles to burn into oblivion (didn’t want to spend the $200 to rent the chipper again). I started the first pile of with a little diesel, and it looked like it was starting fine, and then in about 30 seconds the entire pile is consumed in a huge bright flame. This stuff burns hot! Within about 15 minutes the pile was small enough that it looked like it needed to be pushed together to finish burning, but I couldn’t get close enough to actually touch anything it was so hot.

So, out comes the tractor. I had it ready on the side with a bucket full of dirt, and also 3 lengths of garden hose at the ready for prevention of destroying the neighborhood. I jumped on the tractor, and using the scraper, I was able to back into the pile and push it together, but it was still to hot to stick around for more than a few seconds.

After about 30 minutes, the pile was small enough that I wasn’t worried about eyeballing it all the time, so I set off pile number 2. This was the biggest pile (about 8 feet around and high), and within 30 seconds, I had 30 foot flames shooting out. I had to stand back about 25 yards to get away from the furnace blast the pile was putting out, and I grabbed the Treo 650 out of my pocket, thinking I could take a couple of pictures to pass the time. The only picture I am posting is one where I make it look like the tractor is on fire. I thought it looked kinda cool, but I do apologize for the grainy pic (the Treo’s camera is not that great).

Here it is:

I also took a 30 second video with the camcorder, but it was not interesting, unless you like fire as much as I do. Destruction is totally cool, and calming as well (at least for me).

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